LONDON (AFP) ? Europe's stock markets and the euro drifted higher on Monday, amid a lack of data and significant corporate news, while mining companies were lifted by record-breaking copper prices, dealers said.
London's FTSE 100 index of top shares rose 0.70 percent to 6,039.28 points.
Frankfurt's DAX 30 climbed 0.77 percent to 7,271.83 points, the Paris CAC 40 won 1.0 percent to 4,087.84 points and the Stoxx 50 index of top eurozone companies increased by 0.83 percent to 3,028.21.
The euro firmed to 1.3596 dollars, compared with 1.3583 dollars late in New York on Friday.
"Investors have started the week on the front foot, hunting commodity-related equities such as miners and energy firms, helping to charge European indices higher," said City Index strategist Joshua Raymond.
"It's been a very positive start to the week with buyer demand spread evenly across the board helping each key equity sector to post early gains."
Copper rocketed to a new historic peak at 10,160 dollars per tonne on the London Metal Exchange, handing a boost to miners, as the industrial metal was lifted by tight global supplies.
"Naturally with the price of copper extending gains yet again, this has attracted buyers in the heavyweight mining sector," added Raymond.
Asian stock markets traded mixed on Monday after a US jobs report gave a muddy picture of the state of the world's biggest economy, while concerns over Egypt pushed oil back above $100.
Tokyo ended 0.46 percent higher, Seoul added 0.47 percent and Sydney won 0.12 percent, but Hong Kong finished 1.49 percent lower.
Trade was quiet across the region as dealers in many markets returned to work after the Lunar New Year holiday, although Shanghai and Taipei remained closed.
"The trend of a global equity market rise is continuing on the back of a stable recovery in the US economy," Hiroichi Nishi, general manager at Nikko Cordial Securities, told Dow Jones Newswires.
Before the weekend, Wall Street struggled higher on Friday as the turmoil in Egypt continued for an 11th day and US job indicators gave a confusing picture of the economy's direction.
The United States released data showing just 36,000 non-farm jobs were created in January, far fewer than the 148,000 expected.
However, it also said the unemployment rate fell to 9.0 percent of the workforce from 9.4 percent.
Normally such a big decline in the jobless rate would boost optimism over the country's recovery -- the rate has been above nine percent for 22 months.
But the government said the fall came after recalculations on population. At the same time it said the low job creation number was because of the apparent impact of huge snowstorms in January, which skewed data collection.
Tokyo's Nikkei was lifted by exporters on the back of a weakening yen as well as merger activity -- stoked by reports last week of tie-up talks between Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Industries.
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