NEW YORK: Wall Street moved higher in early trading Tuesday, with the Dow and Nasdaq indices hitting intraday all-time highs.
Investors are reviewing mostly upbeat earnings reports as the day’s trading gets underway.
The Commerce Department also reported earlier Tuesday that the US trade deficit had narrowed just over three per cent in December, with strong showings in some export sectors.
About 40 minutes into the day’s trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq were both up 0.4 per cent to 20,134.25 and 5,683.65 respectively.
The broader S&P 500 was itself also flirting with another all-time high, up 0.3 per cent at 2,298.52.
The rosier open suggested major US indices may resume their recent upward trend after moving mostly sideways around the start of the month.
Among the Dow’s major gainers, Boeing was up 1.74 per cent while IBM and Apple both added about 1 per cent.
However shares in GM were down more than four per cent, with investors fretting over higher costs despite solid sales and the optimistic outlook for 2017.
Shares in oil super-majors Chevron and Exxon Mobil were suffering, however, with prices down 0.6 per cent and 0.4 per cent respectively.
Currency
The increasingly unpredictable French presidential election race unnerved European financial markets on Tuesday, tipping the euro towards its biggest fall this year and driving investors away from French government bonds.
The premium investors demand for buying French 10-year government bonds over German 10-year bonds
rose to 78 basis points, the highest level since November 2012 before easing back a bit. It was 50 basis points only two weeks ago.
The dollar recovered from earlier losses to register its biggest gain of 2017 against a basket of major currencies, jumping against the offshore Chinese yuan after Beijing’s foreign exchange reserves fell below $3 trillion for the first time in six years.
