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Summary European stock markets were mixed Monday amid deep concern about the global economy.
While London was closed for the jubilee bank holiday, the German DAX stock index traded below the key psychological level of 6,000 points for the first time since January.In late morning exchanges, the DAX stood at 5,983.34 points, down 1.11 percent from the close on Friday.For the start of the new trading week things are looking increasingly bleak for European equities, ETX Capital trader Markus Huber commented.He added that the market trend downwards was based on Fridays much worse than expected US job data and news overnight out of China pointing towards a broadening of the slowdown from manufacturing into the service sector.In Paris however, the CAC 40 index erased opening losses to show a rise of 0.82 percent to to 2,974.54 points after having lost more than two percent on Friday to reach a six-month low point.Spanish stocks were also back in positive territory after falling by more than one percent at the start of trading to 5,990.7 points, the first time the Ibex-35 index had dropped below 6,000 points since 2003.It later shot up by 2.63 percent at 6,224.30 points.On foreign exchange markets, the euro traded for 1.2427 dollars, up slightly from its level late Friday in New York of 1.2423 dollars.In Asia, Hong Kong shares tumbled, with the benchmark Hang Seng Index shedding 2.01 percent to 18,185.59 points, putting it in negative territory for 2012.Tokyo stocks slumped 1.71 percent to close at 8,295.63, with the Nikkei 225 index now at its lowest mark since late November.Tension between eurozone sovereign debt issues eased somewhat, with the interest rate, or yield, on benchmark German 10-year bonds rising to 1.194 percent from 1.172 percent on Friday.French 10-year bonds fetched 2.238 percent, up from 2.245 percent, while the rate on Spanish counterparts eased to 6.481 percent from 6.495 percent and Italy stood at 5.839 percent, down from 5.844 percent.This slight re-balancing is explained by technical corrections, bond market analysts at BNP Paribas said.Meanwhile, in Spain the labour ministry said Monday that the number of jobseekers in Spain fell by a slight 0.63 percent to 4.71 million people, the second consecutive monthly drop after hitting a record high in March.Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the industrialised world, with 24.44 percent of the workforce idle, according to the national statistics office Ine.In neighbouring Portugal, the finance ministry said it would inject more than 6.65 billion euros ($8.2 billion) into private banks BCP and BPI, and the state-owned CGD to meet criteria established by the European Banking Authority.Five billion euros of that amount would come from an envelope worth 12 billion included in an EU/IMF financial rescue plan drawn up in May 2011, the ministry said.In Cyprus, news agency CNA reported that President Demetris Christofias has not ruled out seeking aid from the EUs permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism.Economists warned that European authorities did not seem to be tackling the debt crisis in a determined and coordinated manner, leaving investors to fear stock prices could sink further still.While many consider the recent move to the downside as vastly overdone, any help in the short term seems also hard to come by with politicians continue to disagree about measures to stabilise the current situation and the ECB unwilling being dictated to by falling markets and a worsening in sentiment, Huber said.UniCredit Chief economist Erik Nielsen added that in his opinion, global political leadership is in short supply these days.
