The London stock market has clawed back some lost ground after US jobs data judged to be not too hot and not too cold cheered investors who had been spooked overnight and this morning.
A 300 point drop on the Dow Jones index set the scene for falls in Europe this morning, with the Footsie down 1.5 per cent at one point, and poor economic data adding to the market's woes. But US jobs data judged to be of the 'Goldilocks' temperature that can steer the Fed away from rate rises was enough to lift markets back up.
The FTSE 100 closed down 0.76 per cent, or 51 points, at 6,679, while the Dow Jones was trading down 0.67 per cent at 16,452 at 5pm UK time.
The US economy added some 209,000 jobs last month, below the 233,000 that was expected, and unemployment rose slightly to 6.2 per cent from 6.1 per cent in June, according to official data.
investors cheer: US jobs data showed 209,000 jobs were added in July
'It's a Goldilocks report for an economy that is steadily expanding but not lifting off. It will reinforce for now the Federal Reserve's commitment to a gradualist policy approach,' said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, according to Reuters.
The S&P 500 was down 0.63 per cent at 1,918.5 at 5pm UK time, while Europe's markets also tumbled into the red, with Germany's Dax sliding a hefty 2.1 per cent to 9,210 on fears Europe's fragile recovery was running out of steam.
Jasper Lawler at CMC Markets said: 'The jobs numbers missed on the three main data points, but they weren’t disastrous misses; so that goldilocks result was enough to give the Dow and S&P some relief after yesterday’s huge losses.'