European shares bounced back today to hover near last week's 12-month highs, with banks, food producers and drugmakers leading the advance ahead of more earnings results from major companies such as Apple.
Commodity shares were also in demand as a rise in metals prices helped miners, while energy equities drew strength for crude prices, which have jumped more than 10 per cent this month.
Financials added the most points to the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares, with Standard Chartered, HSBC, Barclays, Dexia and BNP Paribas up between 1.1 per cent and 3.4 per cent.
By 1044 GMT, the benchmark index was up 1 per cent at 1,020.02 points, just shy of a one-year high of 1,026.43 hit on Friday. It is up 23 per cent so far in 2009 and has surged 58 per cent since reaching a record low in March, but is still down 38
Per cent from a multi-year peak touched in mid-2007.
The technical outlook remained positive, with the index staying in a broad uptrend channel dating back to March this year. It faces chart resistance at 1,023 points, the 38.2 per cent retracement of its drop from mid-2007, but analysts see a good chance of that barrier breaking in coming weeks.
"It's looking encouraging. Having made new highs for the year last week, clearly the uptrend from the March low isn't over," said Phil Roberts, technical analyst at Barclays Capital.
"Medium- to long-term, it looks like it has got further upside potential, with a return to the highs of summer 2008 as the first objective," he said.
The index hit a high of 1,378 points in May 2008.
Food producing companies were also in demand, with Nestle, Unilever, Cadbury and Associated British Foods rising between 0.7 percent and 4 per cent.
Across Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 index, Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 rose 1.2-1.3 per cent.
Investors awaited more corporate earnings news, with results from Texas Instruments and Apple due later in the day, after rattled on Friday by disappointing results from General Electric and Bank of America.
Thomson Reuters Proprietary Research shows that with about a quarter of companies in the US S& P 500 index having reported, 79 per cent have beaten analysts expectations.