US stocks rise as trade talks lift hopes

New York: US stocks rose at the open on Friday, with spirits buoyed by hopes for progress in high-stakes US-China trade negotiations.

The positive start to the day followed Thursday’s dip on fears of declining global growth after a batch of grim economic data from Europe and Japan.

That was compounded by the surprising weakness in data on US manufacturing and business investment also released Thursday.

About 20 minutes into the day’s trading, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader S&P 500 were both up 0.3 percent at 25,938.38 and 2,781.79, respectively.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq had gained 0.4 percent to 7,487.85.

President Donald Trump is due to meet with the visiting Chinese delegation, the White House said, a sign he and China’s leader Xi Jinping were personally invested in a successful outcome, after Xi met with negotiators in Beijing last week.

“The market will continue to look for a memorandum of understanding between the two nations, a date and place of a potential summit between President Trump and China’s President Xi, and an announcement if the March 1 deadline will be delayed,” Briefing.com analysts wrote Friday.

Just after the start of the New York trading session, shares tied to trade rose. Boeing gained 0.9 percent and Caterpillar was a hair into positive territory.

Meanwhile, Kraft-Heinz nosedived 26.2 percent, a day after reporting a quarterly loss, a $15 billion write-down and disclosing that US securities regulators were investigating the company’s procurement procedures.

Investors later Friday will also be digesting remarks from several top Federal Reserve officials and a semi-annual Fed report on monetary policy.

[source_without_link]AFP[/source_without_link]