Investors will be reacting to some surprisingly positive U.S. economic news Thursday. Wall Street futures are pointing to a positive open for stocks.

The U.S. Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product rose at a 2.4% annual rate, much more than the 1.4% pace in the previous two quarters, but economists caution against seeing this as a permanent trend.

Much of the spike came from defence spending at home and in Iraq, they say. Moreover, this number is largely an estimate and could be revised downward as the Commerce Department collects firmer data.

There was also some unexpectedly good news from the U.S. Labour Department. Initial jobless claims dropped by 3,000 to a five-month low of 388,000 for the week that ended Saturday.

This is the third straight weekly decline. Investors are hoping that this may be a sign that the labor market may be stabilizing. Economists were actually expecting an increase of 14,000 claims.

At 10:00 ET investors will get another important piece of news — the Chicago Purchasing Managers index, which is an indication of the health of the American manufacturing sector.

Earnings reports continued this morning. Petro-Canada is reporting that second-quarter profit is up 83% at $588 million. Revenue increased 16% to $2.83 billion.

Suncor’s news wasn’t as good. Its quarterly earnings fell by almost half to $121 million due to a month-long oil-sands maintenance shutdown.

Precision Drilling’s second-quarter profit rose to $10.9 million, as revenue increased 10% to $356.6 million.

Despite the positive outlook for North American equity markets, European stock markets are down slightly. London’s FTSE index is off 19.1 points at 4,122.1 at midday. Frankfurt’s DAX is off by 0.3% and Paris’s CAC40 is down 0.2%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei average closed down 69.45 points to 9,563.21. It was dragged down by technology shares hurt by disappointing earnings. Toshiba is down 8.3%, following an 8.4% drop Wednesday. Other losers have included NEC, Hitachi and Fujitsu.

In Hong Kong, property shares pushed the Hang Seng index up 11.61 points to 10,134.83.