World stocks hovered around their highest prices in six weeks after a U.S. trade deal with Britain fueled guarded optimism for progress in tariff talks with other countries.

MSCI's broadest index of world shares gained 0.1% after jumping around 0.8% on Thursday, to levels seen just before Trump's 'Liberation Day' global tariff announcements.

"The deal between the U.S. and UK was more style over substance," said Kyle Rodda, a senior financial markets analyst at Capital.com.

The "general terms" agreement leaves in place a 10% tariff on goods imported from the UK but lowers prohibitive U.S. duties on UK car exports. Britain agreed to lower its tariffs to 1.8% from 5.1% and provide greater access to U.S. goods.

"However, it feeds the narrative that the U.S. is looking to bang out rapid-fire trade deals and reduce tariffs — at the margins — and other trade barriers," Rodda said.

Last week, Trump said he has "potential" trade deals with India, South Korea and Japan.

Trump pushed back against seeing the UK deal as a template for other negotiations, perhaps, including those due Saturday when U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and chief trade negotiator Jamieson Greer will meet China's economic tsar He Lifeng in Switzerland.

European stock markets opened higher on Friday. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.4%, as of 0915 GMT, with all regional bourses trading higher.

An investor rush from safe assets such as government bonds into riskier ones such as stocks might mean markets are getting ahead of themselves on optimism, said James Rossiter, head of global macro strategy at TD Securities.

"The trade deal isn't really a trade deal. It's an agreement on a few narrow topics. Still, it shows there is a degree of movement and that some tariffs could be mitigated," said Rossiter. Even so, he added, "tariffs are not going away."

Reaction to the UK trade agreement yesterday and the optimistic trade figures that emerged yesterday from China have pushed markets higher temporarily, but "the fundamentals behind what markets are seeing are not as robust," said Rossiter.

Safe haven German Bund prices fell on Friday, driving yields 5.2 basis points higher, as investors dropped their bonds for assets with higher returns.

Bitcoin soared to the highest since January and U.S. crude ticked up after a more than 3% surge on Thursday.

Brent crude added 85 cents to $63.70 per barrel, following Thursday's 2.8% rally. NYMEX U.S. crude skipped up 84 cents to $60.76 per barrel on Friday, building on the previous day's surge.

Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick no longer sees risk sentiment as the main driver for bitcoin.

"It is now all about flows, and flows are coming in many forms," said Kendrick, the bank's global head of digital assets research, pointing to an influx of cash into bitcoin ETFs, as well as buying by so-called whales.

Shares of crypto exchange Coinbase Global rose over 5% on Thursday after it announced $2.9 bln deal to buy crypto option exchange Deribit. Shares fell on Friday morning 1.1% after a lower first quarter profit report.

The U.S. dollar index, which measures the currency against six major peers, edged away yesterday's one-month peak down 0.3%.

The euro rose from its one-month trough at $1.1257, and sterling ticked up 0.2% to $1.3270.

Mainland China blue chips closed down 0.2%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng ended 0.4% higher. Japan's Nikkei soared 1.6% and Taiwan's equity benchmark advanced 1.8%, with technology shares the strongest performing sector.