US pre-open: Futures have stocks ending week on a high

As of 1220 GMT, Dow Jones futures were up 0.27%, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures had the indices opening 0.26% and 0.33% firmer, respectively.

The Dow closed 158.11 points higher on Thursday, building on gains recorded in the previous session.

The blue-chip index jumped more than 1% on Wednesday and hit a fresh record high of more than 37,200 on Thursday, with gains fuelled by comments from the Federal Open Market Committee's Jerome Powell that rates will be cut up to three times in 2024, indicating that the central bank was on a path to successfully implementing a soft landing for the US economy.

Treasury yields, which move inversely to stocks, headed south this week after briefly topping 5% in November, with the benchmark 10-year note down slightly lower at 3.914% and its two-year counterpart slightly lower at 4.384%, pushing the dollar to a fresh four-and-a-half month low.

Finalto's Neil Wilson said: "Stocks continue their exuberant post-Fed rally with slightly more circumspect gains into the weekend. Shares in Europe pared some very hefty gains into the close on Thursday and are a little firmer this morning. FTSE 100 rose 1.2% on Thursday, whilst European shares were broadly 0.9% higher. US stocks, which had put on a real show on Wednesday after the Fed, delivered more modest gains in the next session, with the S&P 500 up a quarter of one percent, and now sits about 1.5% from its record. The Dow added 0.43% to move further into record territory. Asian stocks broadly followed higher."

On the macro front, December's NY Empire State manufacturing index will be published at 1330 GMT, November capacity utilisation and industrial production figures will be out at 1415 GMT, and S&P Global's manufacturing, services, and composite PMIs were slated for release at 1445 GMT.

No major corporate earnings were slated for release on Friday.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com