The Thanksgiving holiday in America gave traders on Wall Street a break, but in Europe the markets turned positive after a lacklustre day on Wednesday.

While American traders chewed the turkey, their European counterparts chewed over the possibility that Washington will bail out the US car industry, and savoured the aftertaste of China’s aggressive interest rate cut.

London closed just shy of 2 per cent higher, Frankfurt was 2.3 per cent up and Paris gained 2 and a half per cent.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude slipped back to around 53 dollars 50.

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