MW : Miners lead gains for Europe as economic hopes grow
The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index (ST:SXXP 237.39, +2.54, +1.08%) rose 0.5% to 236.06, after picking up 2.7% last week.
Miners are leveraged to an economic recovery and advanced as gold, silver and copper futures gained ground in electronic trading.
Shares of Rio Tinto (UK:RIO 2,473, +72.50, +3.02%) (RTP 159.25, +5.39, +3.50%) up 1.7% and shares of Xstrata (UK:XTA 873.50, +38.50, +4.61%) up 3.6%.
Eramet (FR:ERA 217.85, +13.15, +6.43%) shares jumped 6.2% after it was upped to buy from neutral at Nomura, which said the market doesn't appear to widely know that manganese ore prices have increased sharply, citing data from Metal Bulletin and Vale management.
The information is not reflected on Bloomberg's manganese ore price chart, because the news service gets its prices from Metal Bulletin on a lag, Nomura added.
On a regional level, the U.K. FTSE 100 index (UK:UKX 4,904, +53.60, +1.11%) rose 0.8% to 4,889.04, the German DAX index (DX:DAX 5,522, +59.04, +1.08%) climbed 0.8% to 5,504.32 and the French CAC-40 index (FR:PX1 3,651, +35.28, +0.98%) advanced 0.7% to 3,640.94.
Asia markets were higher and U.S. stock futures were pointing to a stronger open on Wall Street, with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures up 52 points.
Stocks closed higher on Friday after a stronger-than-forecast reading of existing-home sales and optimistic comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, also said over the weekend there are signs of an improving economy though he stressed that there was still a "very bump road ahead of us."
Oil and gas services group Petrofac (UK:PFC 926.50, +10.50, +1.15%) rose 1% after it said that its first-half net profit rose to $145.6 million, from $121.2 million at the same point a year ago. Revenue rose to $1.59 billion, from $1.58 billion last year.
The group said it's confident in delivering earnings growth for the full year of at least 20%.
Repsol (ES:REP 17.44, +0.34, +1.99%) (REP 24.55, +0.98, +4.16%) shares rose 1.5% in Madrid to 17.40 euros.
The Spanish oil producer was upped to buy from neutral with a 20 euro price target by UBS, which said production from new projects will add around 300,000 barrels a day, which is close to the current production level.
