By msnbc.com news services
Wall Street is set to rally at Friday?s opening bell, ahead of new U.S. jobs data and a summit that could decide the euro zone's future.
Signs that leaders of France and Germany are working hard to reach a compromise deal ahead of the Dec. 9 summit, viewed as make-or-break for the 12-year old single currency bloc, kept the euro firm versus the dollar and encouraged investors to push equity markets higher.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed in a speech to defend the euro, though she warned the euro zone debt crisis would take years to resolve.
Sentiment has also been buoyed by data showing an uptick in the U.S. economy, the world's largest, and jobs figures due later are broadly expected to confirm the tentative recovery.
Focus has partly shifted to U.S. non-farm payrolls -- a key gauge of the country's economic health -- and traders said investors were reluctant to take big bets before the numbers are released.
Johan Javeus, chief strategist at SEB in Stockholm, predicted the data would confirm the U.S. economy is faring better than it was in the first half of the year.
"I don't think markets are looking for a payrolls number that will say the U.S. is on a very strong recovery trajectory, it's rather a number that should confirm what we've seen in other data, that things are not as bad as people thought a few months ago," he said.
Data on Thursday showed U.S. manufacturing activity rose to its highest in five months, while consumer spending and private-sector job creation have also been stronger.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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