Europe midday: Stocks jump amid strong inflows from investors

European stocks have found a bid heading into the weekend, amid data revealing strong inflows into the bloc's equity markets.

"Equities are positive to close out the week, rebounding from a negative US close and ahead of a key Senate vote to stave off a government shutdown tonight. [...] Interestingly, Germany’s DAX is the rank outperformer, this in spite of additional Euro strength after hawkish ECB comments, whilst US equities point towards a positive open this afternoon," commented Mike van Dulken at Accendo Markets.

On a related note, strategists at Bank of America-Merill Lynch pointed out to clients how European equity funds had seen a third straight week of positive inflows, accelerating throughout the last week to their highest mark in 36 weeks.

However, that followed a large outflow in December, the largest in 14 months.

Against that backdrop, as of 1222 GMT the benchmark Stoxx 600 was 0.46% or 1.82 points higher to 400.55, alongside a gain of 1.02% or 135.13 points on the German Dax to 13,416.80 and a rise of 0.46% or 25.54 points in the Cac-40 to 5,520.42.

The news-flow on the economic front was rather sparse at the end of the week.

According to the European Central Bank, the euro area's current account surplus rose from €30.3bn in October to €32.5bn for November, taking the cumulative 12-month surplus to €386.1bn or 3.5% of the bloc's gross domestic product.

Still on the agenda for later in the day, was the Belgian central bank's consumer confidence index for January at 1500 GMT, alogside the preliminary results of the University of Michigan's consumer confidence survey for January.

In corporate news, spirits-maker Remy Cointreau warned that a stronger euro versus the US dollar and yuan would reduce its earnings in 2018 by between €17m and €18m.

Meanwhile, Hugo Boss chief Mark Langer told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung his company was aiming to grow more quickly than the market next year.