The Spanish stock index Ibex-35 began Friday's trading day with a moderate rise, in a context of fluctuations in monetary expectations that now point to a near ceiling in credit cost increases in the United States.

On Thursday, two US macroeconomic indicators were released - retail sales, which rose against expectations, and the weekly unemployment figure, which was also higher than expected - suggesting that the long-awaited moderation in prices could continue and thus allow the Federal Reserve's (Fed) tightening cycle to come to a halt.

However, the optimism was contained by the less flattering warnings of the European Central Bank (ECB), which on Thursday raised interest rates again and suggested that it will not hesitate to do so in the next meetings, if the persistence of inflation is confirmed.

ECB economists revised up their price forecasts, "a sign that, despite moderating headline inflation, core inflation remains a concern and 'inflation too high for too long' is still being shuffled around," said securities house Renta 4 in its daily report.

These analysts noted that Thursday's rate hike "means accumulating +400 bps (basis points) of hikes since July 2022 and leaves the door open for further hikes, as well as keeping rates high for as long as it takes to bring inflation back to its medium-term target of 2%."

On Friday, the revised Eurozone inflation data for May will be released, which could confirm the still elevated levels of underlying prices (which exclude fresh food and energy due to their higher volatility).

At 07:05 GMT on Friday, the Spanish selective stock market Ibex-35 was up 22.20 points, 0.24%, to 9,453.00 points.

If it closes this way, the index is on track to accumulate a weekly gain of 1.65%, after the slight loss of 0.08% in the previous week.

The FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of large European stocks was up 0.22%.

In the banking sector, Santander rose 0.11%, BBVA gained 0.03%, Caixabank advanced 0.11%, Sabadell fell 0.10%, Bankinter dropped 0.10%, and Unicaja Banco lost 0.27%.

Among the large non-financial stocks, Telefónica gained 0.30%, Inditex gave up 0.03%, Iberdrola gained 0.39%, Cellnex gained 0.22%, and the oil company Repsol rose 0.88%.

(Information by Tomás Cobos; edited by Darío Fernández)