(Updates prices after European markets open)

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U.S. deal with UK is first since Trump's tariff pause

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U.S. officials to meet with Chinese negotiators on

Saturday

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European stocks open higher

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Bitcoin leaps to highest since January; gold falls for

third day

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Chip shares rise in Japan, Taiwan; China stocks struggle

By Nell Mackenzie and Kevin Buckland

LONDON/TOKYO, May 9 (Reuters) - 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 ( COIN ) 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.