US shares started firmly on the front foot as traders cheered a clutch of positive earnings reports and as China's central bank cut interest rates.
The benchmark Dow Jones added 141 points to 17,625, while the Nasdaq, the tech heavy index, added 100 to 5,020.
The broader based S&P500 index added 21 points to stand at 2,074.
The move from China - its sixth rate cut this year - comes at a time of unease about the globe's second largest economy and ahead of a possible quantitative easing programme in Europe and a tightening (rate rise) in the US.
In China, the one-year lending rate will be cut to 4.35% from 4.6% from Saturday.
Chris Beauchamp, at IG Index looked at the markets response: " The action seen in the past 24 hours has been more than enough to make up for the sleepy atmosphere that prevailed in the first half of this week.
"Stock markets were already in robust form after Mario Draghi’s appearance yesterday, but a surprise rate cut (if a sixth cut in a year is a surprise) from China prompted the rally to move into a higher gear.
"While the move is a recognition that the Chinese economy is slowing, markets can apparently live with this if they believe that the PBoC is prepared to take steps to counter the weakness."
In Germany, the Dax is up over 300 points and the CAC 40 gained 122 points. FTSE100 in London is up 77 points.
On the corporate front, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) was a good gainer, up almost 7% as a surge in sales at its web services division helped the online retailer post a surprise quarterly profit.
The cloud computing business reported sales of $2.09bn in the third quarter, up from $1.17bn for the same quarter last year - a 78% rise.
American Airlines Group (NASDAQ:AAL), the world’s largest airline, reported an 80% jump in profit in the September quarter, driven by lower fuel prices. Shares eased 1.87% however.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) jumped to a record high after solid progress in mobile and video advertising helped the new holding company for Google post a third-quarter earnings and revenue beat and announce a share buyback.
The shares were up over 9% to around US$711 at the time of writing after touching an all-time high of $752.50.
Net income rose to $3.98bn, or $5.73 per share, compared with $2.74bn, or $3.98 per share, a year earlier, the California-based company said on Thursday.