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1. U.S. stocks opened higher on Friday after a surprise interest rate cut in China added to a broad rally driven by strong quarterly results from Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.

China's central bank cut interest rates for the sixth time since November on Friday in another attempt to jumpstart a slowing economy.

"Some of the worst fears associated with China were put to bed at least temporarily," said Ernie Cecilia, chief investment officer of Bryn Mawr Trust.

Global markets rose again, a day after the European Central Bank signaled that it was ready to extend its stimulus plan.

2. China's central bank cut interest rates for the sixth time since November on Friday, and it again lowered the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves in another attempt to jumpstart a slowing economy.

China's monetary policy easing is at its most aggressive since the 2008/09 global financial crisis, underscoring concerns within Beijing about the health of the world's second-largest economy.

3. The euro erased gains against the U.S. dollar on Friday, falling to a two-month lows as hints of additional stimulus measures by the European Central Bank overshadowed the release of positive economic reports from the euro zone earlier in the day.

EUR/USD pulled away from 1.1140, the session high, to hit 1.1023 during U.S. morning trade, declining 0.74%.

The pair was likely to find support at 1.0959, the low of August 11 and resistance at 1.1140, the session high.

The single currency was hit after ECB President Mario Draghi said the central bank will "reexamine" its monetary policy in December, hinting at the possibility for further easing measures.

4. The U.S. dollar rose to three-week highs against its Canadian counterpart on Friday, after the release of disappointing inflation data from Canada and as optimism over the health of the U.S. economy continued to support the greenback.

USD/CAD hit 1.3192 during early U.S. trade, the pair's highest since October 2; the pair subsequently consolidated at 1.3179, climbing 0.66%.

The pair was likely to find support at 1.2930, the low of October 20 and resistance at 1.3176, the high of October 5.

5. New revenue streams such as mobile and video advertising should continue to propel earnings of Google parent Alphabet Inc (O:GOOGL), whose shares were set to open at a record high on Friday following better-than-expected results, analysts said.

The company's search traffic on mobiles surpassed desktop traffic worldwide for the first time in the latest quarter.

Alphabet's shares were up nearly 10 percent at $746.95 in premarket trading, far above the $713.33 record high set by Google - the company's former name - in regular trading in July.

A 10 percent rise equates to about $46 billion in market value. This would give Alphabet a market cap of about $519 billion, cementing its position as the second-most valuable stock after Apple Inc (O:AAPL), worth about $660 billion.

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Against all odds - The rags-to-riches story of Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz.

Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz says he drinks four to five cups of coffee a day.

Thirty years ago, Howard Schultz got into the coffee business with one goal in mind: to enhance the personal relationship between people and their coffee.

He's now responsible for Starbucks, one of the world's most beloved brands, and worth at least $3 billion as chairman and CEO of the Fortune 500 Company. But it wasn't an easy path to the top.

How did Schultz, who came from a "working poor" family in the Brooklyn projects, overcome adversity and grow a quaint Seattle coffeehouse into the largest coffee chain on Earth?

Schultz was born on July 19, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said growing up in the project exposed him to the world's wealth disparity.

He experienced poverty at an early age. When Schultz was 7 years old, his father broke his ankle while working as a truck driver picking up and delivering diapers. At the time, his father had no health insurance or worker's compensation, and the family was left with no income.

In high school, Schultz played football and earned an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University. By the time Schultz started college, he decided he wasn't going to play football after all. To pay for school, he took out student loans and worked at various jobs, including working as a bartender and even occasionally selling his blood.

After graduation in 1975, Schultz spent a year working at a ski lodge in Michigan waiting for inspiration. He finally landed a job in the sales training program at Xerox, where he got experience cold-calling and pitching word processors in New York. The work didn't fulfill him, so after three years he left to take a job at Hammarplast, a housewares business owned by a Swedish company called Perstorp.

There, Schultz ascended the ranks to vice president and general manager, leading a team of sales-people out of the US office in New York. It was at Hammarplast that he first encountered Starbucks. The coffee shop had a few stores in Seattle and caught his attention when it ordered an unusually large number of drip coffeemakers.

Intrigued, Schultz traveled to Seattle to meet the company's then owners, Gerald Baldwin and Gordon Bowker. He was struck by the partners' passion and their courage in selling a product that would appeal only to a small niche of gourmet coffee enthusiasts.

A year later, Schultz then 29-year-old finally persuaded Baldwin to hire him as the director of retail operations and marketing. At the time, Starbucks only had three stores, but they were selling pounds of coffee for home use, Schultz said.

Schultz's career as well as Starbucks' fate changed forever when the company sent him to an international housewares show in Milan. While walking around the city, he encountered several espresso bars where owners knew their customers by name and served them drinks like cappuccinos and cafe lattes. Schultz had an "epiphany" the moment he understood the personal relationship that people could have to coffee.

In 1985, Schultz left Starbucks after his ideas to cultivate an Italian-like experience for coffee-lovers was rejected by the founders. He soon started his own coffee company: Il Giornale (Italian for "the daily").

In order to get Il Giornale off the ground, Schultz had to raise more than $1.6 million. "In the course of the year I spent trying to raise money, I spoke to 242 people, and 217 of them said no," he wrote. "Try to imagine how disheartening it can be to hear that many times why your idea is not worth investing in. ... It was a very humbling time."

Schultz spent two years away from Starbucks, wholly focused on opening Il Giornale stores that replicated the coffee culture he'd seen in Italy. In August 1987, Il Giornale bought Starbucks for $3.8 million, and Schultz became CEO of Starbucks Corporation. At the time, there were six stores.

America swiftly took a liking to Starbucks. In 1992, the company went public on the NASDAQ; its 165 stores pulled in $93 million in revenue that year. The world eventually caught on, and by 2000 Starbucks had grown into a global operation of more than 3,500 stores and $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

Starbucks' success made Schultz rich, and in 2001 he demonstrated his growing love for Seattle when he bought the Seattle Supersonics for $200 million. But the investment turned sour as the team struggled and Schultz feuded with players. In 2006, he sold the Sonics to a group of investors that moved the team to Oklahoma City, severely damaging his popularity in Seattle. He later called owning the team "a nightmare."

Running Starbucks came with set-backs, too. In 2008, Schultz temporarily closed 7,100 US stores in order to retrain baristas on how to make the perfect espresso. Over the next two years he led Starbucks' massive turnaround, with profits tripling from $315 million to $945 million by 2010.

As part of the overhaul, Schultz announced that Starbucks would aim to hire 10,000 military veterans and their spouses by 2018. Last year the company announced it would pay for employees' college tuition.

Throughout his career at Starbucks, Schultz has always prioritized his employees, who he calls "partners." Largely because of his father's experience when he was injured, Schultz offers all his employees (including part-time workers) complete health-care coverage as well as stock options.

In the last 28 years, Schultz has grown the coffeemaker to include more than 21,000 stores in 65 countries (ironically, there are none in Italy). "I've always been driven and hungry," Schultz said. "Long after others have stopped to rest and recover, I'm still running, chasing after something nobody else could ever see."

Schultz has parlayed Starbucks' extraordinary success into two books: "Pour Your Heart Into it: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time" (1999) and New York Times bestseller "Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing its Soul" (2012).

As Starbucks has continued to grow — it now has annual sales of more than $16 billion — so has Schultz's fortune. His net worth is estimated to be $3 billion. He revealed in "Pour Your Heart Out" that his tremendous professional success is a tribute to his late father, who "never attained fulfillment and dignity from work he found meaningful."

1. Magnificent tech

Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) and Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30) (aka Google) all reported impressive quarterly results on Thursday in the late afternoon. Investors are bidding shares much higher in extended trading.

Both classes of Alphabet shares -- GOOG (GOOG) and GOOGL (GOOGL, Tech30) -- are rising by about 10% premarket.

Amazon's stock is also up by about 10% and Microsoft shares are climbing by about 7%.

2. Stock market overview

U.S. stock futures are rising on the back of these earnings results. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index is leading the way forward.

European markets are also rallying in early trading, with many key indexes up by over 1%. This positive momentum comes after the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said Thursday that the bank was examining new ways to tackle deflation and get the economy moving again. The bank could act as early as its next meeting on Dec. 3.

Steps the ECB could take in six weeks' time include cutting interest rates even deeper into negative territory, or increasing the size and scope of its program of quantitative easing -- printing money to buy government bonds and other assets.

The euro weakened significantly in the wake of these comments.

Over in Asia, stock markets all closed the week with gains.

3. Market losers

TalkTalk and Pandora show that yesterday wasn’t a positive day for everyone.

Shares in TalkTalk Telecom Group are dropping by about 10% in London after the company said private data from its four million customers could have been stolen after it experienced a "significant and sustained cyberattack" earlier this week. British police are investigating the case.

Shares in Pandora (P) are taking a massive double-digit drop after the music streaming service posted quarterly results and announced a $90 million settlement with record companies for misusing some pre-1972 music.

4. Earnings

Investors can expect quarterly reports from companies including American Airlines (AAL), Procter & Gamble (PG) Whirlpool (WHR) and Royal Caribbean (RCL) this morning before trading begins.

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Amazon surprised investors (again) on Thursday by posting its second consecutive quarterly profit and also topping revenue estimates in the third quarter.

Shares of Amazon shot up 11% in after-hours trading.

During the quarter, net income surged to $79 million, or 17 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $437 million, or 95 cents per share, a year ago. This beats analyst estimates of a 13 cent loss per share.

Amazon, which is known for playing the long game and sacrificing profits along the way, also delighted investors by posting a rare profit last quarter.

Total revenue increased 23% to $25.4 billion, beating analyst estimates of $24.9 billion. Revenue would have risen 30% if not for currency headwinds.

Helping to drive the rise in revenue was continued strength in its cloud-hosting division, Amazon Web Services. Revenue from the business rose to $2.08 billion, up 78% from a year ago and 14% from last quarter. AWS operating income more than quadrupled.

Looking forward to the fourth quarter, the online retailing juggernaut is forecasting blockbuster performance. It expects revenue between $33.5 billion and $36.75 billion and operating income between $80 million and $1.28 billion.

Behind this forecast are expectations for ”record holiday season.” Amazon has said it expects to hire 100,000 people in North America for seasonal help and that most of the orders shipped should be through an Amazon Prime account.

You can expect Amazon to push its new line of tablets, including the $49 Fire tablet, during gift-giving season. Amazon has used gadgets like these to promote its Prime membership, and earlier this month, even said it will stop selling competing video-streaming devices from Apple and Google.

On the earnings call with analysts and investors, the question arose about whether the company is at a point now where it can deliver consistent profits. The short answer: No promises. “Innovation and investment will continue and could be lumpy over time,” said chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky. “But we’re also working on cost reduction and efficiency.”

Shares of Amazon jumped 11% to $627.39 in after-hours trading Thursday and are up 80% this year. Amazon has trounced the broader market and is one of the year’s best-performing stocks.

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What is it? It's a leading indicator of economic health - businesses react quickly to market conditions, and their purchasing managers hold perhaps the most current and relevant insight into the company's view of the economy.

When? At 9:45am Eastern Time.

Trading Tip: If the actual number is higher than the forecast, you can expect the USD to rise.

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What is it? Consumer prices account for a majority of overall inflation. Inflation is important to currency valuation because rising prices lead the central bank to raise interest rates out of respect for their inflation containment mandate.

When? At 8:30am Eastern Time.

Trading Tip: If the actual number is higher than the forecast, you can expect the CAD to rise.

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1. U.S. stocks opened higher on Thursday after McDonald's and eBay reported strong quarterly results and jobless claims data pointed to improvements in the labor market.

The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI) rose 124.36 points, or 0.72 percent, to 17,292.97, the S&P 500 (SPX) gained 13.57 points, or 0.67 percent, to 2,032.51 and the Nasdaq composite (IXIC) added 39.18 points, or 0.81 percent, to 4,879.30.

2. The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, remaining at levels consistent with a fairly healthy labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 259,000 for the week ended Oct. 17, the Labor Department said on Thursday. They remained not too far from levels last seen in late 1973.

It was the 33rd straight week that claims were below the 300,000 threshold, which is normally associated with a firming jobs market.

3. The euro tumbled to three-week lows against the U.S. dollar on Thursday, after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi hinted at the possibility for further easing measures before the end of the year.

EUR/USD hit 1.1160 during U.S. morning trade, the pair's lowest since October 2; the pair subsequently consolidated at 1.1171, plummeting 1.57%.

The pair was likely to find support at 1.1132, the low of October 1 and resistance at 1.1351, the session high.

4. U.S. home resales rose more than expected in September to the second highest monthly sales pace since February 2007, suggesting the housing market continues to show strength compared to the rest of the economy.

The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday existing home sales increased 4.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.55 million units.

August's sales pace was revised slightly lower to 5.30 million units from the previously reported 5.31 million units.

5. Oil prices rose above $48 a barrel on Thursday, propelled by technical buying and as investors re-evaluated U.S. data that showed falling stockpiles of fuel as well as higher crude inventories.

Brent for December delivery rose 51 cents to $48.36 a barrel by 0656 ET. The global crude benchmark finished down 86 cents, or 1.8 percent, on Wednesday, after hitting $47.50, its lowest since early October.

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