LONDON (AP) ? Markets were headed for a strong close to a historic week after the release of forecast-busting U.S. payrolls figures for February.
The Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs during the month, way ahead of expectations for a gain of about 170,000.
The unemployment rate also fell, to 7.7 percent in February from 7.9 percent the previous month, adding to the upbeat mood surrounding the U.S. economy.
Hopes over the world's largest economy have pushed stock markets higher this year, with the Dow hitting a string of record highs this week. They have also given the dollar a lift as investors think the run of positive news may prompt the U.S. Federal Reserve to bring an end to its super-loose monetary policy sooner than previously thought.
The payrolls figures lifted stocks in Europe from session highs and doubled the gains anticipated at the Wall Street open.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.5 percent at 6,474 while Germany's DAX rose 0.8 percent to 8,000. The CAC-40 in France was 1.3 percent higher at 3,842.
The Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures were up 0.6 percent.
In the currency markets, the euro was 0.6 percent lower at $1.3020 while the dollar was 1.6 percent higher against the Japanese yen, at 96.33 yen ? its first foray above 96 yen since the summer of 2009. The yen has also been on the retreat over the past few months amid expectations of a change in Japan's economic policy that will likely involve the Bank of Japan printing more money.
A lower yen has the potential to make Japanese exports cheaper and that's been at the heart of the Nikkei's recent surge. Earlier, the index jumped 2.6 percent to 12,283.62, its highest close since September 2008.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.4 percent to 23,091.95 while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3 percent to 5,123.40. Those in mainland China and Singapore fell.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-payrolls-figures-markets-another-lift-135246739--finance.html
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Man was not meant to spend all day hunched over a dimly lit screen; disturbingly high incidences of obesity, joint pain and fatigue is our body’s not-so-subtle way of saying it wants to get up and move around. After piloting a walking desk, a standing desk attached to a treadmill, for a month, I’m convinced they should become the default workstation. Immediately, my daily calorie burn jumped 30.7% and I lost 3lbs and a percent of body fat in a week. I also experienced less joint pain throughout the day. What Is a Walking Desk? The Lifespan TR-1200-DT5 places a square standing desk atop standard size treadmill (74″). Instead of a large front dashboard, a relatively discrete control panel for speed is attached on the body-facing side of the desk. Speed varies from .4 MPH to 4MPH (about the pace of a light run) Getting Started With Slow But Steady Adjustments Migrating to the walking desk was relatively easy: I just plopped my laptop and monitor down on the squarish 46-inch desk and got to work. The intuitive interface lets you choose several tracking mechanisms for calorie burn and distance. The first day I couldn’t walk more than an hour at a time before I felt like I was losing concentration. It also takes some getting used to walking like a tyrannosaurus rex (arms tucked-in and elbows bent at the keyboard). At first, I would work for an hour walking, and then sit for 30. The first day I walked about 4 hours. Now I only rest once a day. It also took a bit to develop the musculature in my upper back to support raised arms for hours on end. This is no longer a problem. After experimenting with different speeds, I now vary between .8 and 1.2, picking up speed in the late morning early afternoon to offset the nature fatigue that preceeds the morning news rush. Every-so-often I have to learn on my elbows or straddle the rails to take a break. Burning More Calories While its intuitive to think that walking for an extra 5-8 hours a day would burn more calories, recent scientific evidence suggested otherwise. A study of “exergames”, video games which require full-body movement, found “no evidence that children receiving the active video games were more active in general, or at any time, than children receiving the inactive video games,? concluded the research