European stock markets closed narrowly mixed in choppy trade yesterday as investors waited in hope that a make-or-break EU summit will deliver a solution to the eurozone debt crisis.
Dealers said there were persistent concerns that EU leaders will not come up with the comprehensive package they have promised in order to tame a crisis that now appears to threaten the whole euro project and the global economy.
Heavily-indebted Italy, a new major source of concern, is hoping to convince its EU peers that it does not require a huge debt bailout similar to that handed out to Greece but there are doubts too on that front.
Ahead of the summit, the European Commission called on eurozone leaders to deliver a “credible” response to the debt crisis.
“We need a deal... We expect a credible political answer to key questions on the table,” commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a news briefing just hours before European leaders were to meet in Brussels.
Dealers said the markets traded in a narrow range through the day, pegged back by some of the negative headlines out of Brussels but supported by a strong early performance on Wall Street until that faded.
In London, the FTSE-100 index of top companies closed up 0.50 per cent at 5,553.24 points but in Paris, the CAC-40 slipped 0.15 per cent to 3,169.62 points and in Frankfurt the DAX 30 fell 0.51 per cent at 6,016.07 points.
Other European markets showed similar small gains and losses.
In equally volatile trade, the euro was at lower at $1.3836, off highs well above $1.39 levels and down from $1.3904 late on Tuesday as the dollar dropped to 75.98 yen from 76.06 yen.
In New York, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, after losing 1.74 per cent on Tuesday, was up 1.28 per cent in early trade but by 1600 GMT had slipped back to show a gain of only 0.50 per cent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite initially added 1.00 per cent but then fell, to show a loss of 0.32 per cent.
“Buying interest comes despite a weak finish (Tuesday)... to the prior session and angst about how members of the European Union will achieve any plans developed today during a summit,” said analysts at http://Briefing.com .