European blue chips vaulted higher yesterday, buttressed by surging insurers after bullish news from the region's biggest insurer Allianz and by rallying technology stocks such as bellwether Nokia.
"The markets have been led by the techs and the financials. They're high beta stocks and investors look at those as the way to play any rally, which has been the story since we hit the lows in October," said BNP Paribas equity strategist David Thwaites.
Movements in high beta stocks tend to exaggerate those in the broader market.
"Does it make sense fundamentally? Probably not. All the corporate news and economic news we've had in the last couple of weeks has been pretty bad. It's a technical rally, but I don't think it's got legs," Thwaites added.
Consumer cyclicals were also big gainers, swelled by Richemont, the world's second-biggest luxury goods group, which reported a big drop in first-half operating earnings, but whose results were not as dismal as many analysts had feared.
Banking giant HSBC's announcement that it had agreed to pay $13 billion in shares for US consumer credit firm Household International left it among the day's few decliners, as investors fretted about an overhang of stock in the group.
Engineering firm Invensys ditched a quarter of its value after issuing disappointing first-half results and a grim outlook, while Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus sank after its credit rating was cut to "junk" status by S&P.
By 1645 GMT, with only Frankfurt still trading, the FTSE Eurotop 300 index was up two per cent at 901 points as gainers beat decliners by about four-to-one. The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index jumped 3.6 per cent to 2,522 points.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.1 per cent, buoyed by better-than-expected October retail sales data, while the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite added 2.3 per cent.
Allianz was among Europe's biggest blue-chip gainers, jumping 7.7 per cent as investors shrugged off its worst-ever quarterly loss and focused on the firm's announcement that its insurance business was performing better than expected.
Swiss bank Credit Suisse also helped the sector, rising 7.6 per cent after saying it had brought in investment banker Leonhard Fischer to turn around its ailing insurance arm.
And French insurer AXA leapt 8.3 per cent after it announced lower than anticipated pre-tax provisions on guaranteed income benefits on US life policies - reassuring investors worried that Axa was facing hefty US liabilities.
The gains helped the DJ Stoxx Insurance index rise 5.2 per cent.
Techs were buoyed by figures released by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International showing global sales of chip-making equipment rose 19.8 per cent to $2.34 billion in September.
The increase was the first rise in 19 months and the figure was the highest monthly total since April 2001.
Dutch chip equipment maker ASML added 4.8 per cent, German chipmaker Infineon added 4.4 per cent and Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics added 5.8 per cent.
Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson rose 8.6 per cent, helped by news that it is expected to win 40 per cent of Malaysia's third-generation market, valued by analysts at $790 million.
Elsewhere, Richemont's 14.1 per cent rally helped lift consumer cyclicals, as did British holiday operator MyTravel Group, which soared 32 per cent on renewed speculation that the troubled company could attract a bid from a venture capitalist.
Sodexho, the world's second-biggest contract caterer, rose 8.5 per cent before today's results that are expected to show a rise in full-year net profits but a fall in operating earnings.