US and European stocks rose on Thursday in choppy trading, following sharp rallies in the previous session, as traders weighed developments in Ukraine and central banks’ moves to tighten monetary policy.
Wall Street’s broad-based S&P 500 share gauge, which closed more than 2 per cent higher on Wednesday, was up 0.5 per cent by early afternoon in New York. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.4 per cent.
In Europe, the regional Stoxx 600 index closed 0.5 per cent higher after rising 3.1 per cent in the previous session. London’s FTSE 100 gained 1.3 per cent.
Those moves came after the Bank of England raised borrowing costs on Thursday, following on from a rate rise by the US Federal Reserve a day earlier.
The BoE’s monetary policy committee voted eight to one to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points to 0.75 per cent and predicted that inflation was expected to hit 8 per cent by the end of June.
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