European Shares Seen Higher At Open

(RTTNews) - European stocks are likely to open higher on Friday, with renewed optimism around artificial intelligence and Fed rate cut hopes likely to underpin investor sentiment, heading into the weekend.

The White House said "thousands" of jobs from "Democrat agencies" would be cut as another day of the U.S. government shutdown passed.

"We could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects, and then they'd be permanently cut," President Donald Trump said of Democrats in an interview that aired on One America News Network.

The next Senate vote on a House-passed resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21 is scheduled for Friday afternoon.

U.S. stock futures ticked higher after a record-setting day on Wall Street. Today's scheduled release of the September U.S. jobs report is all but certain to be delayed, but the Institute for Supply Management is still due to release its report on service sector activity.

Closer home, final composite purchasing managers' survey results from the euro area and the U.K are due later in the day.

Asian stocks were mostly higher in thin trade, with mainland China and South Korean markets closed for holidays.

During an interview with CNBC, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects coming talks with China to yield a "big breakthrough" in trade relations, adding that aid for soybean farmers could be announced as soon as Tuesday.

Gold was moving lower in Asian trade as the dollar recovered on hawkish Fed comments. Oil traded higher but was on track for a big weekly loss ahead of an OPEC+ meeting over the weekend, where oil producers may agree to raise output in November, at a similar rate to the increase agreed for October, exacerbating concerns around oversupply.

Additionally, G7 countries have announced plans to intensify actions against Russia. Traders are also considering the prospect of an end of the war in Gaza, which could diminish potential risks to oil supply from the region.

U.S. stocks rose for a fifth straight session overnight, with all three major averages posting new records, as a wave of good news from the AI sector offset worries about the U.S. government shutdown, which is expected to drag on at least until the end of the week.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 0.4 percent as OpenAI completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation. The Dow edged up by 0.2 percent and the S&P 500 finished marginally higher.

European stocks closed at a record high for a second session on Thursday as investors ramped up wagers on Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.

The pan European Stoxx 600 gained half a percent. The German DAX rallied 1.3 percent and France's CAC 40 climbed 1.1 percent while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 dipped 0.2 percent.