Light gains on Wall Street offered some solace to nervous European investors, still agitated by concerns about Brazil and Russia and the US dollar's weakness.

Frankfurt

German shares enjoyed a late flourish to climb out of the red, having been hampered by a weaker dollar and concerns about third quarter corporate results for much of the session.

The later trading electronic Xetra Dax index closed down 6 points at 4,570.

"There's no real negative news out there," said Udo Becker, an institutional dealer at Merck, Finck & Co. in Munich. "But there certainly is a sense of foreboding," he added.

Traders said trading volume is thin, reflecting wariness on the part of investors.

The dollar's fall against the Dmark offered the likeliest explanation for the market's earlier retreat, dealers said.

BMW, Henkel and Adidas featured among the losers.

Though traders said today's nine-month results from Deutsche Bank and Daimler were more or less in line with expectations, investors are reacting to those stocks with a mixture of hesitancy and pessimism.

Paris

French shares finished slightly weaker, upset by the soft dollar and profit-taking in the banking sector.

The leading Cac 40 index had come back from a low to close down 10 points at 3,483.

Credit Lyonnais shares slumped after French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn said earlier today that the privatization of the troubled state-owned bank won't merely be a sale to the highest bidder, but will be a carefully managed process, with stakes going to companies which already have close links to the bank.