European stocks resumed their sell-off on Monday, with a blue-chip index dropping for the 11th session in a row, as a downgrade of U.S. debt fuelled fears the world's No.1 economy could slip into recession, according to Reuters. A European Central Bank move to buy Italian and Spanish bonds to halt contagion from the euro zone debt crisis limited the damage in peripheral markets, with Spain's IBEX up 0.6 percent and Italy's FTSE MIB up 0.3 percent. The Thomson Reuters Peripheral Eurozone Banks index -- which plummeted 14 percent last week -- regained 2.1 percent, with Banco Popolare up 4 percent and Banco Santander up 2.9 percent. But the rally in the peripherals was seen as short lived. "We are staying with positions in Northern Europe, we do not think we have got sufficient certainty to buy back into Italian, Spanish and other peripheral markets," said Bob Parker, senior adviser at Credit Suisse. At 1150 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 1.8 percent at 957.63 points in a roller-coaster session marked by huge volumes, while the euro zone's blue-chip Euro STOXX 50 index was down 0.8 percent at 2,356.29 points, losing ground for the 11th session in a row and hitting a two-year low. Over the past six sessions, European shares measured by the MSCI Europe index have lost about $920 billion in market capitalisation, more than the GDPs of Greece, Portugal and Ireland combined.
