European stocks soar, the World Bank boosts its global growth forecast, the FTSEurofirst powers to levels unseen since mid-2008 and the DAX hits a new all-time high. IG's Alastair McCaig says he thinks the equities rally can withstand tighter monetary conditions for the time being.

SHOWS: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) (JANUARY 15, 2014)

1. IG MARKET ANALYST ALASTAIR MCCAIG, SAYING:

JOURNALIST ASKING ALASTAIR MCCAIG: 'Let's get to Alastair McCaig, Market Analyst at IG. Hi there, Alastair. How sustainable are these gains, do you think?'

MCCAIG: 'Yeah, I think it's certainly an encouraging sign that the World Bank's comments this morning have certainly given confidence to the markets. We've seen that across the boards, the fact that the DAX has now squeezed to all-time highs again sets it back on that trend that it was on prior to the end of 2013. So I guess we were slightly worried that maybe any sort of failure to reach and breach that sort of previous high might see a retest back down to the 1,295, 1,320, 1,330 zone. But that looks less likely to be the case. It looks like we might be upwards and onwards from here.'

JOURNALIST: 'I mean isn't that a problem though, it doesn't seem to take much to give this market confidence. Suddenly, it doesn't seem to take much to disappoint this market.'

MCCAIG:'True, but I think we've said this a number of times when we have spoken previously, the fact that equity markets still remain the primary source for most of the funds to be finding their way to ultimately. And even with US tapering of their debt-buying scheme, we're still seeing a huge volume of cash being pumped ultimately into equity markets. So there is still support there, maybe a little bit less than there previously was but still a pretty sizeable chunk. So I think for the time being, it's still going to be the case, equities and then ultimately indices and indexes for different countries are going to continue rising.'

JOURNALIST: 'Yeah. I mean I'm going to hit this again and I know we've talked about it in the past, but the erratic nature it seems of the market in particular right now, equities, yes they're super worried about earnings season, expectations of misses. They're not worried about it today, it seems. I mean are expectations so low that it doesn't seem to matter? '

MCCAIG: 'I think there are two issues here that the markets have got their head around but ultimately, they're suspending disbelief for the time being which is - we're seeing multiple factors as far as earnings are concerned reaching levels not last seen around about sort of 2009 sort of pre-collapse time. So the markets are nervous obviously on the back of that. But at the same time, there's still a lot of pressure of cash coming into the markets and driving these equity prices higher. So even though the earnings and the profitability of these firms might not warrant the multiples we're seeing, the bottom line is that there is still a huge swathe of buyers lining up to buy into these dips and it's forcing markets higher. '

JOURNALIST: 'Run us through some of your levels again. Where is the DAX headed? Where is the support right now and what's the level that we need to break right now to move higher?'

MCCAIG: 'Well I think the level that we instantly need is a break with last year's previous high which we've done today. Nice to see us close above that obviously. We're pretty solidly in a trend higher and only a sort of break below the sort of 9,520, 9,530 area would give us real cause for concern. So at this point in time, I think we're back in the trend. We're certainly not in an overbought range as far as the likes of RSI are concerned. So I think we still got a sizable chunk on the upside. Maybe more than 100 pips might be- start to get a little bit nervous again, but I think we're still well entrenched in that bullish trend.'