The FTSE 100 is up for the sixth day running this morning, shaking off a weaker-than-expected report on Britain's dominant services sector with traders looking instead to US unemployment data due at 1.30pm UK time.
The index is up 28 points, or 0.5%, at 5399 in late morning trading and gains are fairly broad-based with the top performers including temporary power supplier Aggreko, software group Autonomy, retailer Next and media company WPP.
Moves are muted though ahead of this month's closely watched - and notoriously hard-to-predict - US non-farm payrolls data. Economists polled by Reuters forecast on average a decline of 100,000 jobs overall in August, and a rise of 41,000 private sector jobs.
Most recent economic data from the US has surprised on the downside but manufacturing figures this week gave markets some respite.
Chris Redfern, senior dealer at cureency business Moneycorp comments:
"We expect that the US will report around 100,000 job losses in August, a third consecutive monthly decline after the 131,000 job losses reported in July and 221,00 in June. While Wall Street has seen a good start to the month, we could easily see the safe-haven dollar suffer today as the US economy shows further signs of deterioration. British importers should monitor the situation closely and look to take advantage of any positive reaction from the pound."
