The IBEX 35 kicked off Friday’s session with a slight upward bias, reaching historic highs and aiming for a fourth consecutive week of gains, after a week packed with central bank decisions and encouraging inflation data from the United States.

Early in the day, the Bank of Japan decided to raise interest rates to levels not seen in three decades, from 0.5% to 0.75%, and signaled its readiness for further hikes, while in Europe, the Bank of England on Thursday opted to cut rates to 3.75% and the European Central Bank held steady.

In the U.S., Wall Street’s main indices climbed the previous day, following soft inflation data that kept hopes alive for potential rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

U.S. consumer prices rose less than expected year-on-year, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor did not release the monthly CPI change, as the recent U.S. government shutdown prevented the collection of all October data.

“European markets open without major changes (Eurostoxx futures -0.3%, S&P futures -0.1%) after a session of gains on Wall Street (especially the Nasdaq +1.5% following recent declines), buoyed by the positive U.S. CPI data for October-November,” Renta 4 said in a note to clients.

“However, caution is warranted in interpreting the data, given the lack of detail on its components due to the ‘shutdown’,” they added, referring to the U.S. government closure.

On the macroeconomic front, investors will be watching Friday for the preliminary December eurozone consumer confidence reading (1500 GMT) and the final figures from the University of Michigan’s U.S. consumer sentiment survey (1500 GMT).

At 0811 GMT on Friday, the IBEX 35 was up 17.50 points, or 0.10%, at 17,150.10 points, pointing to its fourth consecutive positive weekly close, with a gain of 1.7%. If it closes at current levels, it would also mark a new record for the Spanish blue-chip index.

In the banking sector, Santander fell 0.38%, BBVA rose 0.08%, Caixabank advanced 0.29%, Sabadell gained 0.86%, Bankinter was up 0.18%, and Unicaja Banco climbed 0.15%.

Among the major non-financial stocks, Telefónica slipped 0.63%, Inditex advanced 0.25%, Iberdrola rose 0.45%, Cellnex gained 0.11%, and oil company Repsol lost 0.23%.

The FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of leading European stocks was unchanged.

(Reporting by Benjamín Mejías Valencia; editing by Tomás Cobos)