Fired-up markets

U.K. stocks marched higher on Thursday, a day after narrowly breaking a five-session winning run, as miners advanced on the back of a rally for major metals and the pound slid to a four-week low against the dollar. The FTSE 100 Index rose 0.5% to close at 7,507.99, marking its sixth win in seven days. The benchmark on Wednesday slipped 0.01% after a mixed reading on the country’s services sector capped off a disappointing round of figures for purchasing managers indexes.

U.S. equities rose an eighth day, the dollar strengthened and Treasuries slipped as the latest batch of data added to optimism in the American economy ahead of Friday’s jobs report. The S&P 500 Index propelled its rally to the longest since July 2013, after jobless claims and factory orders beat expectations. The Dow Jones remains around 325 points away from the next milestone, as the most well-known and oldest U.S. equity benchmark is set to hit 23,000 for the first time ever, notching its fourth straight 1,000 point climb over the past 12 months.

Russian-Saudi Arabian state deals

Russia has pulled out all of the stops as it welcomes King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Thursday, with the monarch leading a high-profile and highly significant delegation to Moscow that will see billions of dollars' worth of joint investment deals. Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and King Salman are set hold two meetings, in which the leaders are set to sign joint investment deals worth more than $3 billion.

The leaders will consider joint steps to further develop bilateral cooperation in the trade, economic, investment and cultural-humanitarian areas, and in addition, discussions are expected on international issues including conflicts in the Middle East. The visit marks the first ever state visit to Russia by a reigning Saudi monarch and is just the latest sign of increasingly cordial relations and closer economic and political ties between the two oil giants.

Google’s Pixel 2

Tech giant, Google, has launched its latest smartphone which aims to turn up the competition with Apple and Samsung. The Google Pixel 2 is the second smartphone under the 'made by Google' label and is the smaller version of the Pixel 2 XL. With the backing of the company's far-reaching search and Assistant capabilities, Google says it's smarter and simpler.

The Pixel 2 boasts a slightly slimmer bezel on either side of the screen vs the original Google Pixel and will feature a 5inch full HD OLED display, which is pretty standard, but the new feature here is the always-on display. The always-on display can show you the time, date, email and text message notifications, and reminders on screen without you having to touch or wake the Pixel 2.