IN BRIEF (Page 17)

Stocks up for 4th day

World stocks rose for the fourth session in a row yesterday and Wall Street looked set to open higher, although European shares fell on weaker banking stocks. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 was down 0.5 percent after earlier putting in some moderate gains. Japan's Nikkei closed up 0.59 percent.

Mining stocks had lifted Europe on higher commodity prices. The commodity-tracking Reuters/Jefferies CRB index is up 8.6 percent this month. But after a number of days of gains investors sold off financial stocks, dragging the index lower.