The irrational exuberance, if that's what it is, ahead of the weekend's Eurozone summit seems to have infected Wall Street too.
Despite Germany and France saying there will now be two summits, the second not later than Wednesday, and dire warnings from Standard & Poor's that it might cut the ratings of five European countries, including France, investors seem to be hoping - perhaps against logic - that a deal will actually be done. So instead of taking the extra meeting by Wednesday as a bad sign - that the disagreements between France and Germany are proving almost impossible to resolve - they are viewing the move as a sign the EU will make sure it takes enough time to come up with a deal that sticks. We will see.
So Wall Street has opened up more than 140 points in early trading, the FTSE 100 is 82.60 points better at 5467.28 and French and German markets are up nearly 2% and 3% respectively.
The risk sectors such as banks and mining groups which investors tend to avoid in the bad times are back in favour, with Barclays 8.3p better at 180.3p and Xstrata up 44.2p at 940p. Xstrata was also given a lift by analysts at HSBC raising their recommendation from neutral to overweight.
