Global stocks climb back after steep losses and rate cuts

By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Many stock markets rose strongly on Thursday and winners during the recent turmoil, such as the yen and gold, slipped as at least temporary calm returned to markets a day after coordinated global interest rate cuts.

European shares .FTEU3 were 1.9 percent higher. Emerging market shares as measured by MSCI .MSCIEF were up 3.1 percent.

Demand for government bonds, gold and low-yielding currencies -- all recent beneficiaries of investors searching for relative safety -- fell.

The direction of the moves was the mirror of what happened on Wednesday and earlier in the week, but nowhere near matched the degree.

MSCI's main world stock index .MIWD00000PUS, for example, was up 1.1 percent. But it lost 3.9 percent on Wednesday, 3.0 percent on Tuesday and 6.1 percent on Monday.

Thursday's relative calm followed an unprecedented display of international coordination on Wednesday when the U.S. Federal Reserve and central banks from Europe, Canada and China executed emergency rate cuts in the face of plunging global equity markets and the worst financial crisis in some 80 years.

"Markets are not turning positive, they are recovering from heavy losses that we saw earlier this week. The sentiment has not really improved," said Rik Zwaneveld, trader at AFS Brokers, in Amsterdam.

"The rate cuts are a good step in the right direction to stop the bleeding, but this won't be enough."