Stock index futures signal higher open

(Reuters) - Stock futures pointed to a higher open for equities on Wall Street on Monday after strong gains in the previous session, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.7 to 0.9 percent.

New York Federal Reserve releases its Empire State Manufacturing Survey for October at 1230 GMT. Economists expect a reading of -4.00 compared with -8.82 in September.

The Federal Reserve releases industrial production and capacity utilization data for September at 1315 GMT. Economists expect a 0.2 percent increase in production and a reading of 77.5 percent for capacity utilization. In August, production rose 0.2 percent and capacity utilization was 77.4 percent.

European stocks markets/index?symbol=gb%21FTPP">.FTEU3 rose 1.2 percent early on Monday, extending their brisk recovery rally into a third week, as investors rushed back into equities on mounting expectation of a bold plan to fight the euro zone debt crisis at next weekend's European Union summit.

The world's leading economies pressed Europe on Saturday to act decisively within eight days to resolve the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis, which is endangering the world economy.

Greece's debt crisis cannot be solved without larger writedowns on Greek debt, and governments are trying to persuade banks to accept this, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday.

U.S. stocks scored their first back-to-back weekly gains since early July on Friday, on strong Google (GOOG.O) earnings and as investors kept riding the optimism for a solution to the euro zone's debt crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average finance/markets/index?symbol=us%21dji">.DJI closed up 166.36 points, or 1.45 percent, at 11,644.49 on Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX ended up 20.92 points, or 1.74 percent, at 1,224.58. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC rose 47.61 points, or 1.82 percent, to 2,667.85.

Japan's Nikkei average .N225 gained 1.5 percent on Monday.