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Autos push Europe higher
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Europe's top stocks were mostly firmer Friday, led by autos and chemical shares as sentiment was buoyed by growing expectations that the U.S.-led war against Iraq will end soon.
Deutsche Telekom Poor's said there was "absolutely no pressure" on the firm's credit rating.
Retailers such as Britain's Dixons The market's fortune turned on developments in Iraq, where U.S. troops consolidated their hold on the outskirts of the capital Baghdad. A U.S. spokesman said about 2,500 elite Republican Guard troops had surrendered overnight. "Sentiment is something that is measured by the minute these days and the market at the moment is a reflection of what we've been seeing on the television," said Florian van Laar, an asset manager at Eureffect in Amsterdam. "We had an unenthusiastic start this morning and then after the reports that the troops were surrendering it turned the market around," he said. UK stocks cruised to a weekly gain of nearly three percent on Friday as financials, oils and retailers all performed strongly. The FTSE 100 (.FTSE) ended up 43.3 points at 3,814.4, with banks and oils responsible for 23 points of the rise. The FTSE was up 1.15 percent on the day and 2.9 percent above where it started the week. Frankfurt's electronically-traded DAX was up 3.3 percent at 2654.07 Friday, while the CAC-40 ended up 1.8 percent at 2837.96. Abbey National was one of the biggest blue-chip gainers, up 4.7 percent higher after JP Morgan upgraded the stock to "overweight." Elsewhere among financials, Amvescap (AVZ.L) was up 4.4 percent and Lloyds TSB (LLOY.L) rose 3.5 percent. By 1601 GMT, the FTSE Eurotop 300 index <.FTEU3> of pan-European blue chips was one percent higher at 795 points as the euro zone DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index <.STOXX50E> added 1.68 percent to 2,219 points. That left the pan-European benchmark up almost seven percent for the week and brought its gains to more than 16 percent since the market hit a six-year low in mid-March.
Helsinki's HEX general index <.HEX> bucked the firmer regional trend, weighed by a sharp fall in Finnish paper maker UPM-Kymmene
The chemicals sector was Europe's main gainer, buoyed by a 4.4 percent rise in Bayer The German drugs and chemicals firm jumped as victory in a second U.S. court case and rising out-of-court settlements indicated its liabilities over recalled cholesterol drug Baycol would be less than feared.
In the autos sector, Volkswagen
DaimlerChrysler
The basic industries sector was hard hit by a sharp fall in mining giant Anglo American The company said it rejected efforts to claim apartheid reparations. The sector was also weighed by a steep fall in Finnish group UPM-Kymmene. The stock fell 7.7 percent after the world's largest magazine paper maker said first-quarter profits would halve this year due to weak prices and the falling U.S. dollar.
Technology stocks also eased, weighed by results from STMicroelectronics Shares in the Franco-Italian group fell four percent. On Wall Street around 11:20 a.m. ET the Dow Jones industrial average (up 26.82 to 8267.20) and the S&P 500 index (up 1.93 to 878.38) were barely changed, trending higher. The Nasdaq composite (down 8.53 to 1388.05), the weakest performer of the three, logged declines. (Full Story) The U.S. market was subdued by a warning from Iraq late in the European day that it might take "non-conventional" action against U.S.-led forces who have seized a Baghdad airport. Earlier, the U.S. government released data that provided a reminder of the parlous state of the U.S. economy when it announced that the number of U.S. payroll jobs outside the farm sector dropped by a bigger-than-expected 108,000 in March. "The payroll figures are telling us the U.S. economy is exceptionally weak, and the weakness goes beyond anything that is associated with geopolitical risk and the other excuses we've had," said John Shepherd, economist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
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