NEW YORK, Dec 13 — Wall Street opened higher today, moving hesitantly after the European Central Bank trimmed growth forecasts and announced the end of a multi-trillion-euro stimulus programme.
The gains by US stocks added to yesterday’s positive finish on optimism about the current US-China trade talks.
Officials say Beijing has proposed concessions, offering to cut auto tariffs and rewrite an industrial policy that Washington strongly denounces but details remain scarce
About 10 minutes into the day’s trading the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.6 per cent at 24,527.27 while the broader S&P 500 had gained 0.5 per cent at 2,651.07 14.29.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq was up nearly 1 per cent at 7,098.31, putting the index on track to post a third straight day of gains but leaving the index still in correction territory.
Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com said markets had been whipsawed by “recycled news narratives” about trade and the Federal Reserve that have pushed stocks both up and down in recent days.
“The market’s response to the ECB decision was appropriately muted since it didn’t contain any real surprises,” he wrote.
Apple Inc rose 0.9 per cent after announcing plans for a US$1 billion (RM4.18 billion) campus in Texas, enlarging the tech giant’s footprint outside Silicon Valley.
Embattled engineering giant General Electric soared 9.7 per cent after JPMorgan upgraded the company’s long-suffering stock, saying GE’s was now more likely to emerge from long-running travails.
The Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits plunged unexpectedly, reverting to a low trend after a run of higher readings in the wake of late-summer hurricanes and recent wildfires.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department also reported declines in both export and import prices for November. — AFP
