WEEKLY UPDATE – Stocks rally in Stockholm as supportive data got the second quarter off to a upbeat start.

• Oil price hits new 17-month highs
• Service sector to boost Swedish economy

Stocks on the Stockholm exchange closed up 1.55 percent Thursday, the last trading day of a holiday-shortened week. Compared to a week ago the OMX Stockholm 30 index was up 0.96 percent.

Stocks jumped after better than expected purchasing managers' index data from China, the Eurozone and the UK. Sweden's manufacturing activity growth slightly eased in March, Swedbank said on Thursday.

Telecommunications equipment giant Ericsson rose Thursday after it said it had completed the acquisition of Nortel's North American GSM operations. Wednesday the company said it had won a 1.3-billion-dollar contract to upgrade the network of Indian mobile operator Bharti Airtel. UBS now places the stock on its short-term buy list and raised its target price.

Sandvik, the world's largest maker of metal-cutting tools, rose 4.45 percent after upgrade by Bank of America / Merrill Lynch and Evli Bank.

Boliden, Europe’s second-largest zinc producer, rose 4.3 percent Friday as global commodity prices rally. Morgan Stanley raised Boliden’s target price Wednesday.

“Robust economic growth among emerging economies has supported commodity prices,” Tobias Merath, head of commodity research at Credit Suisse AG in Zurich, told Bloomberg. “Now the U.S. and Europe are getting increasingly important, as demand there has started to pick up.”

Scandinavian airline SAS, half-owned by Sweden, Norway and Denmark, declined slightly Wednesday after a poll showed that most Danes are against the Danish government participating in SAS' rights issue. On Tuesday the airline issued a profit warning.

US futures indicated slightly higher Thursday ahead of construction spending for February and claims for jobless benefits data. Many investors will have to wait until Monday to register their reaction.

"It would appear that markets are treading water until the release of tomorrow's non-farm payroll figures," analyst Owen Ireland at trading house ODL Securities told AFP.