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 Wall Street was also expected to edge higher when trading resumes,
while the fireworks continued in Russia as tough talk from Vladimir
Putin and a move by the central bank to abandon rules-based currency
intervention sent the rouble soaring.
Chinese shares had jumped 2.5 percent and Hong Kong's Hang
Seng index climbed almost 1 percent overnight after the two
announced a Nov. 17 start date for their long-awaited tie-up that
will allow global investors to buy Chinese stocks from Hong Kong.
European markets also got the week off to positive start amid more
M&A activity and encouraging results from brewer Carlsberg pushing
MSCI's All-World index, which spans 45 countries, to its highest
since late September.
"We have seen pretty strong recovery by stocks in the past few weeks
after the dip last month but we aren't really surprised," said
Sybren Brouwer, head of equity strategy at ABN Amro.
"We have the feeling the global economic recovery is still going on,
and even though there is this gap (in pace of recovery) between the
U.S. and Europe at the moment, we expect Europe will catch up."
In the currency market, the high-flying dollar took a step back,
however, with some traders still using mixed U.S. jobs numbers on
Friday as an excuse to lock in some gains. The Swiss franc was also
in focus as it nudged the Swiss National Bank’s 1.20 ceiling against
the euro.
The SNB has successfully kept a lid on the franc's gains since it
introduced the cap in 2011 and says it has not had to intervene to
reinforce it for more than two years.
But with a referendum on Nov. 30 that is aimed at preventing the SNB
from offloading its gold holdings and obliging it to hold at least
20 percent of its assets in gold, speculators are targeting the cap,
testing the SNB's patience.
ROUBLE RALLY
Europe's bond markets were feeling the benefit of Friday's rally in
U.S. government bonds following the jobs data that showed although
headline employment continued to improve, wage growth remained
subdued.
German government bond yields touched their lowest in nearly a month
and even Spanish ones dipped despite millions of Catalans voting
over the weekend in a non-legally binding referendum on independence
from the rest of Spain.
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Oil prices rose on renewed political tensions in the Middle East and
Ukraine, with Brent crude gaining 1.4 percent, extending its
recovery from a four-year low hit last Wednesday.
Fierce fighting between Iraqi military forces and Islamic State
insurgents, a dip in the dollar, the third Libyan oil field closure
in a week and shelling in the pro-Russian stronghold of Donetsk in
eastern Ukraine, all fed the move.
The dollar's fall also lifted the battered gold price from 4
1/2-year lows to $1,167 per ounce, though it was not such good news
for high-flying Japanese stocks as the yen's rebound meant they lost
0.6 percent.
There was no sign that recent volatility in Russia's rouble was
about to let up either as, after dabbling with the idea last week,
Russia's central bank formally abolished structured currency market
interventions.
It means it is likely to act more unpredictably, and probably
forcefully, going forward. Shortly before the announcement,
President Vladimir Putin had said there was no reason for the slide
in the Russian currency.
After a dramatic fall in the previous week and volatile swings of 6
percent in its rate on Friday, the rouble was last up almost 3
percent at 45.32 to the dollar.
(Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo, editing by Hugh
Lawson)
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