THE London equity market's blue-chip index sank below 5000 points yesterday before bouncing back on expectations policymakers would take further action to ease the eurozone debt crisis, writes Douglas Hamilton.
Traders said dealing was highly volatile with stocks see-sawing between gains and losses. The UK’s FTSE-100 benchmark index closed 25.2 points, or 0.5%, stronger at 5066.81. The barometer of top shares dropped as low as 4928.14 before rallying later in the session. It lost 5.6%, or £78 billion, of its value this week, the second-worst weekly fall this year.
The Paris Bourse’s CAC-40 index finished 1.02% higher and the Frankfurt DAX ended the day up 0.63%.
Wall Street stocks moved higher on talk the European Central Bank might add liquidity to shore up the region’s vulnerable banking system, but worries about a global recession kept US markets volatile. New York stocks fell sharply on Thursday.
Earlier, markets were unnerved after Deutsche Bank said European banks may face a bigger-than-expected hit from a swap deal on Greek government debt. Picture: Reuters
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article