The Libyan fear passes on the stock market, the fall in oil is relaunching the markets

Oil prices fall, Stock Exchanges go up. It is not really a “golden” market rule, but it happened yesterday on lists all over the world that they finally found the strength to react after five negative sessions. It was the unrest in Libya and the unrestrained rise in crude oil that depressed markets throughout the week. But today, after the Brent barrel had touched 120 dollars in the morning in London, reassuring news came from Saudi Arabia: the first global producer and OPEC showed its willingness to compensate for any drop in supply. Thus the Brent sailed between 111 and 112 dollars, while in New York the WTI barrel returned below 100 dollars, to 97.50 in the afternoon.

This favored the rebound of the European Stock Exchanges which had already started in positive territory and closed just below the highs thanks to the good start of Wall Street (which ended with the Dow Jones at + 0.51% at 12130.45 and the Nasdaq + 1.58% to 2781.05 points) at the close the pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose 1.2%. Best piazza was Milan which grew by 1.83%, followed by Paris (+ 1.51%) and London (+ 1.37%), which entered into negotiations with a four-hour delay due to a problem technical. Frankfurt (+ 0.77%) and Madrid (1.64%) also performed well.

(February 25th 2011)