Stocks Surge in Europe; Oil Retreat, Nokia Hearten Investors; Financials Jump
LONDON -- European shares surged Thursday, as investors were heartened by a continued retreat in oil prices and strong earnings from mobile-phone giant Nokia.</br></br>Beaten-down financial stocks jumped on better-than-expected results from U.S. banks.</br></br>The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index jumped 2.9% to 276.27, its biggest one-day gain since April 1.</br></br>Lower oil prices also helped boost stocks in Asia, as did buying in financial stocks.</br></br>"The rebound is not fundamentally driven. The markets will perhaps stabilize in the short term, but when you consider that nothing has changed, markets could head lower after a short gap," said Linus Yip, strategist at First Shanghai Securities in Hong Kong.