Wall Street has moved higher in early trading after Wednesday's fall, with a spate of reasonable economic data helping things along.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up around 70 points, helping push the FTSE 100 30.30 points higher to 5537.70. Initial weekly jobless claims in the US rose by 15,000 to 381,000, slightly higher than the forecast figure of 375,000. But analysts said after three straight falls before this, there did appear to be an improvement in the labour market in December.
Meanwhile the Chicago purchasing managers index came in at 62.5 in December, marginally down on November's 62.6 but ahead of the consensus estimates of 61.
