World stocks were battling to avoid a second day of declines on Thursday as hints of rising inflation led by a one-year high in oil prices and the strongest copper prices in nearly a decade kept traders in check after a boisterous run up.
Europe’s share markets managed to scrape together some early gains as commodities bulls drove drillers and miners up 2.5% to offset disappointing earnings numbers from companies including Airbus and Orange.
Wall Street futures were stuck in the red, though, and most of Asia’s indexes had dipped overnight.
While, China returned from its Lunar New Year holiday to the sight its central bank draining 260 billion yuan ($40.31 billion) from money markets, raising concern about backdoor policy tightening.
In South Africa, shares were set for their worst day in three weeks after a study showed that Pfizer’s vaccine might not be effective against the country’s aggressive COVID variant.
The world’s best-performing currency this year – the Turkish lira – climbed another 0.5% as the central bank maintained its 17% interest rates and reiterated it could raise them again if needed.
