NEW YORK, March 13 — Wall Street forged higher at the open today, casting aside worries about Brexit chaos in Britain and Boeing’s mounting international crisis.
Shares in the aviation giant gained 0.3 per cent just after the open, rising for the first time in three days, as the much of the world closes its airspace to the its top-selling 737 MAX jets.
Investors also were cheered by economic data showing the US manufacturing sector had a boost in January while wholesale inflation remained tame in February.
About 10 minutes into the trading session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is heavily weighted to Boeing’s stock, rose 0.4 per cent to 25,659.09.
The broader S&P 500 also gained 0.4 per cent, rising to 2,802.77, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq had added 0.5 per cent to 7,625.99.
British lawmakers yesterday sent the world’s fifth-largest economy hurtling into the unknown after rejecting a divorce agreement with the European Union, less than three weeks before the Brexit deadline of March 29.
“People were expecting that if the Brexit vote failed, particularly if it was a big one, it would unleash turmoil in the financial market,” Chris Low of FTN Financial told AFP.
“But we come in this morning and the FTSE is unchanged, the pound is only a little bit weaker. Clearly this is what traders expected.”
But Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare said US stock markets had been “careless” so far this week — noting that first-quarter earnings estimates were trending down along with global economic growth.
“The stock market is acting as if it doesn’t have a care in the world, resigned it seems to let the world’s major central banks do all of the worrying and provide all of the talk therapy through assurances that policy rates aren’t going up anytime soon,” he wrote.
Rising aircraft sales unexpectedly drove new orders for US durable goods higher in January, marking the third monthly increase amid a recovery in business investment, government data showed.
And producer prices rose just 0.1 per cent, half the expected increase. — AFP
