Shares partly recouped recent losses on Friday and the dollar steadied, but both headed towards a fourth consecutive week of declines driven by uncertainty over central bank stimulus programmes, Reuters reported. Talk that the U.S. Federal Reserve, which holds its monthly meeting next week, could scale back its bond buying later in the year has led to a sharp selloff in global markets this week. The dollar remained sluggish against the yen and the euro on Friday as European trading picked up, but it looked to have gained a foothold against the Japanese currency at around 94.75 yen having plunged to a two-month trough of 93.75 in the previous session. With better-than-expected U.S. retail sales data overnight appearing to have brought some relief to markets, top European stocks climbed 0.3 percent, tracking a rebound in Japanese and Asian shares in general. Philippe Gijsels, head of research at BNP Paribas Fortis Global Markets, said he expected central banks such as the Fed to keep the stimulus taps open for at least the rest of the year. "If you have easy monetary policy and improving economic conditions, which will also help companies to produce good earnings, ...then you have a lot of the building blocks in place (to drive stock market gains)," he added. This week's falls, the fourth on the trot for most major stock markets, left Europe on course for a weekly drop of 1.5 percent however, and meant the Nikkei has now lost more than 15 percent since mid May. In the debt markets, southern euro zone debt rose after a mixed run of sessions, while German Bunds were also up, gaining 40 ticks to add to this week's gains.
