European shares extend their biggest monthly gains since October

European shares extended their biggest monthly gains since October, with banks leading the gains amid earnings results.

Barclays Plc jumped 5.5 percent as fixed-income trading revenue outperformed European rivals and it said the non-core unit will weigh less on profit in 2017. Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA rose 3.7 percent after reporting quarterly earnings that beat analysts’ estimates. France’s Natixis SA gained 7.6 percent as its profit and revenue topped projections.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index had a monthly rise of 3.6 percent. The gauge rebounded after getting dragged down by a decline in crude prices and lenders on Thursday.

It’s been a broad-based rebound for most Stoxx Europe 600 Index members, with the big exception being energy producers, which suffered from a tumble in oil prices. Companies recovered from a June plunge triggered by the U.K. vote to leave the European Union.

The rebound, though, came amid thin volume, indicating little conviction in the rally. July was marked by record outflows from the region’s equity funds, with global managers turning underweight for the first time in three years.

European lenders headed for their best month since February 2015, rebounding 6.2 percent after their worst since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in October 2008. The moves in Italian and Spanish banks took their national benchmark gauges up more than 1.2 percent on Friday, the most among westernEuropean markets. That’s even as data showed a slowdown in euro-area growth to 0.3 percent in the second quarter, and a rise in Italy’s jobless rate in June. Separately, the region’s inflation unexpectedly accelerated to 0.2 percent in July, the strongest since January.

Asian stocks outside Japan slid from the highest level in almost a year as commodity producers tumbled amid declines in crude oil. Financial shares rallied in Tokyo after the Bank of Japan expanded exchange-traded fund purchases and kept its policy interest rate unchanged.