Stocks mostly rise ahead of key US jobs data
Stock markets mostly advanced on Friday as traders awaited key US jobs data, and after news of falling inflation in the eurozone.
Global equities have enjoyed a largely solid start to the new year, though Wall Street slid on Thursday on expectations that the Federal Reserve is in no rush to stop hiking US interest rates.
A "strong jobs report today would further justify such a hawkish approach and perhaps send risk assets into a bit of a tailspin", noted Craig Erlam, senior analyst at Oanda trading group.
The Fed, along with central banks worldwide, last year kickstarted a string of aggressive rate hikes to battle decades-high inflation.
Official data on Friday showed that annual inflation in the eurozone dropped for a second month in a row, to 9.2 per cent in December.
It was the first decline into single digits since September, and while inflation shows signs of cooling around the world, it remains at sky-high levels.
Long-running fears that monetary policy tightening would cause a recession were brought back into play by figures on Thursday showing more jobs than expected were created in the US private sector last month. The reading from payroll firm ADP indicated the labour...