Stocks set to climb

Stocks were set to continue the previous session's rally on Friday, gaining momentum from world markets on the one-year anniversary of Bernard Madoff's arrest.

The Dow Jones industrial average, Nasdaq-100 and S&P-500 futures were higher.

Futures measure current index values against their perceived future performance and offer an indication of how markets may open when trading begins.

Stocks rallied across the board Thursday as investors sifted through a host of reports on jobs, housing, net worth and the budget deficit. A seesawing dollar was also in focus.

"Everybody is looking for what appears to be a relatively good retail sales report, suggesting that the consumer is not going to be as tight-fisted this holiday season, compared to last," said Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board.

But Goldstein added that consumers are still skeptical about the strength of the job market, which weakens their desire and ability to spend, feeding his own skepticism about the retail report.

"The question is: what if those retail reports are just a little bit disappointing?" Goldstein said. "Why in the world would they be out and having a bang-up holiday season? We could see the market having more of a blah day than a ho-ho-ho day."

Economy: The November retail sales report from the Commerce Department is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Sales are expected to have risen 0.5% after rising 1.4% in the previous month. Sales excluding autos are expected to have risen 0.5% in November after rising 0.2% in the previous month.

The University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index for December is due just after the start of trading. Sentiment is expected to have improved to 68.5 from 67.4 in late November.

Reports on October business inventories and November import and export prices are also due.

World Markets: Stocks in Asia re allied, with Tokyo's Nikkei index gaining nearly 2.5% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index climbing nearly 1%. European indexes were also pushing higher.

Other markets: The dollar was lower against most of the major international currencies, including the euro and the pound, but rose versus the yen.

Crude oil for January delivery edged up 30 cents to $70.84 a barrel.

Gold futures for February delivery were up $14 to $1,142.20 an ounce. That's nearly 6% below last week's record settlement high of $1,218.30.