Wall Street flirted with fresh record highs after the world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, raised its profit expectations and boosted investor optimism.
Stocks gained after Wal-Mart's chief financial officer, Tom Schoeve, said the giant retailer was raising its profit expectations for the third quarter.
As European markets closed, the Dow Jones was up 64 points (0.45%) at 14,142, while the Nasdaq rose 13 points (0.49%) to 2,825.
European shares ended higher, as promises of higher returns to shareholders at Telefonica lifted telecoms, and commodity stocks gained from higher oil and metal prices.
The DAX index ended at 8,033 points, up 47 or 0.59% and in Paris the CAC-40 index closed at 5,862 points, up 24 or 0.42% and in London the FTSE100 rallied 1.38% to hit its highest close in four months as commodity stocks rallied on higher oil and metal prices and heavyweight Vodafone surged.
The FTSE 100 index ended 91 points higher at 6,724 points, not far from its day high of 6,730 points, and the highest closing level since 15 June.
Meanwhile in Dublin the ISEQ closed 1.5% lower at 8,182. The Exchange said today it was adversely affected by the recent downturn in global markets and that it underperformed a number of other indices in June, July and August, with financial stocks particularly weak.
BOI closed down almost 2% at €13.15, Irish Life & Permanent was down over 2% at €16.67 and Anglo was down almost 3% at €13.18.
Earlier, Japanese share prices closed up 1.6% at a two-month high after the central bank refrained from hiking interest rates. Tokyo's Nikkei gained 281 points to 17,459.
