Global equities charged higher yesterday as rising oil prices and buoyant German investor confidence brought cheer to investors, analysts said. 
Shrugging off lingering disappointment over last weekend’s failed Doha oil output freeze talks, crude prices continued to rise. 
“Stocks appear to be taking their cue from the positive momentum in global oil prices, ignoring the pull from mixed earnings reports” and “soft” data for the building of new homes in the US for March, Sheraz Mian, of Zacks Investment Research, said in a note. 
Frankfurt led Europe’s bourses, closing well over 2% higher, after a key survey, the German investor confidence index calculated by the ZEW economic institute, posted a robust increase in April. 
That was the second monthly rise in a row and it beat analysts’ forecasts. 
Elsewhere, London stocks added just under 1% as the FTSE 100 hit its highest level for the year so far, while Paris did the same, winning 1.3% in value. 
“The FTSE 100 has traded at fresh 2016 highs... after a remarkable turnaround in oil markets yesterday has continued, and in doing so pushed stocks higher,” said analyst David Cheetham at brokerage XTB. 
“Equities looked vulnerable at the start of the week after a failure to agree on any tangible measures to quell the increasing levels of crude production amongst Opec and non-Opec members. 
“However the impressive strength of the recovery suggests that the worst of the pain may be behind us.” 
The region’s markets had already rebounded into modest gains on Monday, reversing initial losses that were sparked by the failure of oil producers to agree to an output freeze in Doha on Sunday. 
“Doha meeting? said analyst Brenda Kelly at traders London Capital Group. “Yesterday’s knee jerk decline in oil prices to the disappointing outcome was very quickly reversed as the day wore on. The price of the commodity is also amassing some support from the Kuwait worker strike.” 
US stocks rose slightly yesterday, despite significant first-quarter earnings disappointments from Dow blue chips Goldman Sachs and IBM. 
Tokyo, meanwhile, led a recovery in Asian stock markets, 
soaring more than three%. 
On Monday Asia ended lower while initial sharp losses in Europe and New York turned to gains as dealers were also lifted by positive comments on the US outlook and recent upbeat data out of China. 
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Eric Rosengren declared on Monday the world’s No 1 economy was much healthier than financial markets thought and saw growth picking up through this year. 
“While there have been significant headwinds from abroad, and market turbulence related to those headwinds, I view the US economy as fundamentally sound and likely to perform better than the domestic economies of most trading partners,” he said. 
Michael Pearce, of Global Economics, said he saw “little theoretical or empirical evidence” of the world economy nearing “stall speed”. 
“Unless productivity rebounds, global growth is likely to remain around its current pace of 3% or so in the years ahead. 
“While that would be disappointing by the standards of recent decades, it would not be a disaster, nor should it be taken as a sign that the economy is about to stall,” he wrote in an investors’ note.


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