LONDON — Rising commodity prices pushed European markets higher on Friday, but gains were trimmed ahead of an expected weak opening on Wall Street. In early European afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.4 percent at 4,267.16, Germany's DAX added 0.4 percent to 4,820.70 and France's CAC 40 slipped 0.1 percent to 3,159.48. The markets had been up around 1 percent earlier, helped by rising oil and metals prices and an overnight recovery on Wall Street, where strong corporate profits buttressed optimism about the world's largest economy. Asian stocks had also been lifted earlier by Thursday's rally on Wall Street, which saw the Dow Jones industrial average rise nearly 173 points, or 2.1 percent — the largest daily gain for the index since June 1. But U.S. stocks were headed lower Friday ahead of data on personal spending and consumer sentiment. The market expects the U.S. Commerce Department to report a modest rise in May spending, and the University of Michigan to report that sentiment was unchanged in June. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 0.2 percent to 8,397 and Standard & Poor's 500 futures slipped 0.2 percent to 915.10. Energy stocks helped European and Asian indexes as crude oil prices traded near $71 a barrel. Higher oil prices can hurt consumer spending, but they lift the revenues of energy companies. Shares in Total jumped 1.4 percent and Shell rose 0.9 percent. Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 46 cents to $70.69 in European trading as the dollar slipped further against the euro, drawing investors into commodities. On Thursday, crude gained $1.56. Meanwhile, a rise in metal prices helped mining stocks such as XStrata and Antofagasta in London. Among the losers, UBS AG slipped 3.4 percent after the Swiss bank announced overnight that it expects to raise 3.8 billion Swiss francs ($3.5 billion) through a capital increase and forecasts a loss for the second quarter. More generally, investors were encouraged after U.S. markets on Thursday snapped a four-day losing streak with the help of better-than-expected earnings from homebuilder Lennar Corp. and home furnishings chains Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. The news underpinned hopes that consumer spending, one of the engines of U.S. growth, was picking up after falling over the last year. It also helped investors shrug off another bleak sign that unemployment is rising. Despite the gains, some analysts don't expect the rally that began in March and tapered off this month to resume anytime soon. "I think many investors are waiting for more confirmation that the macro economies are recovering," said Winson Fong, managing director at SG Asset Management in Hong Kong, which oversees about $2 billion in equities in Asia. "Without the fundamentals it's hard to see us moving sharply in one direction or the other right now." "We have seen the markets quite volatile — they can't really make their minds up if they are going up or down," added Jane Coffey, head of equities at Royal London Asset Management. "We had a strong rally from the March lows and although we have continued to see reasonable forward-looking economic data ... the big question now is how strong is the recovery going to be when it starts." In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 benchmark inched higher by 81.31, or 0.8 percent, to 9,877.39 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 325.23, or 1.8 percent, to 18,600.25. Elsewhere, Korea's Kospi gained 0.1 percent, Australia's benchmark rose 1.2 percent and India's Sensex turned higher by 1.5 percent. Shares of Bridgestone Corp. were among the day's biggest gainers in Tokyo, soaring 8.5 percent. The tiremaker said it now expects a net loss of 46 billion yen ($479 million) for the January-June half, a big improvement from the 62 billion yen loss it had projected earlier. The company cited cost cuts and lower commodity prices for the upward revision.

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