Wall Street extends rally to US and Chinese commercial optimism By Reuters

By April Joyner

NEW YORK (Reuters) – US stocks rose on Friday as the growing hope that the US and China solve their trade dispute was increasing market shares across all sectors.

Wall Street rose as a result of a Bloomberg report stating that China was looking to increase its annual imports of goods from the United States with a combined value of more than $ 1 trillion to reduce to zero its trade surplus by 2024.

The news follows a report on Thursday that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was planning to lift all or part of the tariff on imports from China. A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance denied that Mnuchin made such a recommendation.

With Friday's win, the three leading indices were on their way to a fourth successive weekly advance. A strong rally in January helped the S & P 500 benchmark achieve its best monthly gain since March 2016.

The S & P 500 is now 9% below its September 20 record after dropping 19.8% below that level – close to the 20% threshold generally considered to confirm a bear market – on Christmas Eve.

"The risk is back," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at Inverness Counsel in New York. "We bought an olive branch from China regarding the trade, obviously the market had a very positive reaction."

Still, said Ghriskey, the relatively small volume of deals this week indicates that some investors are still waiting on the sidelines.

"Trade negotiations remain uncertain, despite these olive branches," he said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average () rose 280.1 points, or 1.15%, to 24,650.2, the S & P 500 () gained 29.08 points, or 1.10%, to 2,665 points. , 04 and the Nasdaq Composite () added 57.63 points, or 0.81%, to 7,142.09.

US stock markets will be closed Monday for the holidays of Martin Luther King Jr.

Industrials () rose 1.7%, the highest of the major sectors of the S & P 500, while the Philadelphia SE () semiconductor index gained 2.2%. Both groups of shares were sensitive to the evolution of the trade.

Technology stocks () were the largest driver of the S & P 500, up 1.2%, while the defensive utility sector lagged.

Shares of Schlumberger NV (N 🙂 jumped 7.7% after the oil services provider posted a quarterly turnover higher than estimates.

Shares in Netflix Inc. (O :), however, fell 4.1% after the video streaming company forecast lower-than-forecast sales for the first quarter.

Analysts lowered their fourth-quarter earnings guidance for S & P 500 companies to 20.1%, up 14.2% year-over-year, according to Refinitiv's IBES data.

Increasing issues outnumbered declining issues at the NYSE with a ratio of 2.63 to 1; on the Nasdaq, a ratio of 2.06 to 1 favored advances.

The S & P 500 has recorded three new highs in 52 weeks and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 30 new highs and 19 new lows.