Although gradual, signs of recovery have been rampant nowadays as markets gain and economies of most of the world’s major countries, especially Europe, provide improvements in terms of over-all economic activity.

On Thursday, September 3, 2009, the Dow Jones industrial average opened by rising up 37.64 points, or 0.4%, to 9,318.31, while Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 4.64 percentage points or 0.5% to 999.39. Asian markets experienced a mixture of results with economies such as China’s jumping to nearly 5% on the average while that of Japan’s still continue to stutter. European markets like Germany’s DAX was up 0.3% to 5,336.06 and Great Britain’s also rose up 0.2% to 4,826.93.

Still, this slow recovery signals and cultivates a more cautious culture with regards to investments and has capped gains in stock markets. This rise in the world markets can be attributed to the fact that the European Central Bank has raised its outlook for growth and US retailers have reported better than expected sales figures for the month of August. The European Central Bank’s forecast on the world economy was still grim as expected, but they say that there are sure signs of improvement over-all. It has kept its key interest rate at a record low of 1%, contributing to the slightly positive outlook that it forecasted. Bank President Jean Claude Trichet himself said that there are improvements but these are expected to be “uneven both inside and outside the Euro area.”

Howard Archer, chief European economist from HIS Global Insight, further comments that this continuing implementation of policy by the ECB will likely stay the same even if there are “recent improvements in euro-zone economic data and survey.”

A mix of results were obtained in the US as several US retail stores reported sales decline on back-to-school purchases despite the efforts of the chains to focus on just the necessities and do away with unimportant things. But there are companies like Target Corp, Costco Wholesale Corp and Limited Brands Inc that still reported grim results, but have so far beaten analysts’ forecasts and expectations. This suggests that consumers are spending more than before but still definitely less than what will significantly hasten up the world economy’s recovery.