What a morning to wake up to as an investor: U.S. stock futures are pointing to strong gains at the open after stocks across Europe rose more than 2 per cent and scored gains of more than 1 per cent in Asia.
Dow Jones industrial futures rose 108 points, or 0.9 per cent, to 12,334 and S&P 500 futures gained 15.3 points, or 1.2 per cent, to 1,323.90. Nasdaq futures rose 26.75 points, or 1.2 per cent, to 2,337.75.
The catalyst appears to be upbeat earnings from tech companies such as chip maker Intel Corp., which posted better-than-expected sales and forecast quarterly revenues well above Wall Street's estimates. IBM Corp. also blew past analysts' targets, raising its profit forecast and citing strong sales of mainframe computers and brisk business in emerging markets.
Intel said third-party forecasters might have failed to take emerging markets' astonishing growth into account.
The world's biggest cosmetics group, L'Oreal, and carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen also came in with robust figures.
World equities measured by MSCI All-Country World Index advanced 0.9 percent. Emerging market stocks climbed 1.6 percent.
Oil, copper, gold and silver gained as well, pushing the Canadian dollar as high as $1.0512 (U.S.) in overnight trade and the Australian dollar to a 29-year high of $1.0609 against the greenback. The euro rose 0.6 percent to $1.4422, while the U.S. dollar fell 0.4 percent against a basket of currencies.
Gold lingered near its record high, hit on Tuesday, of $1,500 an ounce. Spot silver rose to $44.34, a level unseen since 1980. Copper rose 1.1 percent.Oil rose above $109 a barrel after a report showed U.S. gasoline supplies fell for a second week, suggesting higher fuel costs haven't yet curbed demand.
Of the 45 S&P 500 companies that have reported first-quarter earnings so far, 79 percent of them have either beaten or met market expectations and the remainder came in below forecasts, data from Thomson Reuters StarMine showed.
Japan's Nikkei average rose 1.8 percent to snap a three-day losing run.
Sonali Verma