On Friday The FTSE 100 made up some of the losses it sustained the previous day after the news of Dubai's debt crisis, rising 1% to close at 5,245.
Banks bounced back after being the focus of Thursday's gloom, headed by RBS, which gained 5.2%. HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered made more modest gains, but Lloyds saw a fall of 0.9%.
Commodity stocks were also back on the rise, with miners the day's best-performing sector, led by Xstrata, which added 4.9%, and Lonmin, up 3.5%. Energy stock also firmed up, with gains for BG Group. Royal Dutch Shell and BP.
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Europe
In Europe, the Paris CAC 40 rose 42 points to end at 3,721; and the German Xetra Dax was 71 points higher at 5,686.
US
In the US, markets responded badly to the news from Dubai, after being closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday. The Dow Jones lost 1.5% to 10,309; the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes both fell 1.7% to 1,0941 and 2,138 respectively.
Asia
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose 2.9% to close at 9,345; while the broader Topix index added 3.6% to 839. In China, the Shanghai Composite index gained 3.2% to 3,195; and the CSI 300 rose 3.8% to 3,511.
Commodities
Brent spot was trading at $77.03 early today, and in New York, crude oil was at $76.48. Spot gold was trading at $1,171 an ounce, silver was at $18.18 and platinum was at $1,446.
Currencies
In the forex markets this morning, sterling was trading against the US dollar at 1.6497 and against the euro at 1.097. The dollar was trading at 0.6652 against the euro and 86.14 against the Japanese yen.
UK news
And today, consumer confidence in the UK has taken a turn for the worse, according to research firm Gfk NOP's November survey, falling to -17, from -13 a month earlier. In four out of five areas surveyed, consumers were less optimistic about the future. The only area not to fall was consumer perception about the economic situation over the next 12 months, which was static. Nick Moon of GfK NOP said: "After a fairly steady rise throughout 2009 the index is 20 percentage points above where it was at the start of the year, but this month is the first time the index has fallen for over a year."
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