LONDON (ShareCast) - Retailers continue to lead the market higher as consumers continued to spend, which has offset some negative unemployment data.

Investors were also comforted by the European Central Bank's decision to introduce a three-month delay to its plan to reduce liquidity support for European banks.

There was a bigger than expected 26,000 increase in first time jobless claims last week to 436,000. That took some of the gloss off Wednesday’s bumper private sector jobs data.

But tomorrow’s monthly non-farm payrolls report is the big one. Around 130,000 jobs are expected to have been added by employers in November, after the 151,000 added in October.

The Dow Jones is up 101 at 11,358, the broad-based S&P 500 has risen 13 to 1,219 while the Nasdaq composite has added 23 to 2,573.

Same-store sales for the 27 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters were up 6% compared with initial expectations of a 3.6% rise.

Teen favourite Abercrombie & Fitch bumped up sales by 22%, while Gap reported better than expected 4% growth. Discount group Costco enjoyed a 9% year on year sales hike, Macy's 6% and J.C. Penney 9%.

Some positive data came from the National Association of Realtors which said that pending home sales grew 10.4% in October to beat expectations, after falling in the previous month by 1.8%.

Elsewhere, PepsiCo is set to buy a majority Russian food and beverage company Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (WBD) for over $5bn. PepsiCo announced that it has agreed to acquire 66% of WBD for $3.8bn, and the remaining shares once the acquisition is completed, implying a total value of around $5.4bn.

The Russian group is the country's leading branded food-and-beverage company in "both traditional and value-added dairy products, with a solid position in juice", PepsiCo said in a statement.

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