high oil prices and was unlikely to accelerate the Federal Reserve's pace of U.S. interest rates rises. "The major driver is the oil price and we will probably see the headline number come off next month, given that oil has fallen quite significantly in November," said Stuart Block, an economist at Citigroup. "The market has made its mind up for now that it is not too worried about energy and commodity prices feeding through into consumer prices, so I don't think it's necessarily going to affect the Fed's thinking," Block said, adding that the risk of a December rate rise had been priced in following strong jobs data earlier this month. Also, market watchers noted that companies had been waiting for signs of inflation to feed through to the consumer level as this implies they can regain some of the pricing power they had lost in recent years with a persistent inability to pass on higher production costs to consumers. The Eurotop 300 index has rebounded nearly 10 percent from a 2004 low in mid-August, and further gains could be expected if oil prices continue to fall and U.S. job growth continue to come through strongly, strategists said. --More 2103 Local Time 1803 GMT
