Stocks take a dive after Jobless Claims jump

Nick Serff, Market Analyst, City Index commented: "European Indices fell over 2% on Thursday with investors continuing to turn more risk averse. The miners and banks were heavy fallers after commodity prices suffered from strength in the US dollar investors betted that tomorrows all important non farm payroll data may disappoint after today's jobless claims came out much worse than anticipated.

Investors have certainly moved more to the defensive sectors and left riskier equities such as banking and commodity stocks today, emphasising that perhaps optimism for a strong non farm payroll number tomorrow is drying up.

Shell's results have added to the uncertainty of energy outlook for 2010 created by BP's numbers earlier in the week. Crude Oil prices are also off by over 2% today too and so this is also dragging down the prices of energy firms today.

The ECB and MPC both left rates on hold this afternoon with the European Central Bank giving no signs as to when it would begin withdrawing liquidity. Continued worries over Greece and other peripheral EU countries could lead to rates staying low in the Euro zone for longer than expected. The Bank of England did hit the breaks on its QE program, announcing they would put an end for now to their massive 200 billion asset buy back programme.