New York, US stocks ended higher as stronger-than-expected corporate earnings reports continued to lift investors’ sentiment and US President Donald Trump announced reopening the government for three weeks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 183.96 points, or 0.75 percent to 24,737.20 on Friday. The S&P 500 rallied 22.43 points, or 0.85 percent to 2,664.76. The Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 91.40 points, or 1.29 percent to 7,164.86, reported Xinhua news agency.
Digital and telecom companies, as well as bank card firms propelled the three general stock price indexes, as their corporate performance for the fourth quarter of 2018 topped Wall Street estimates.
Shares of Swedish telecom giant Ericsson rose 4.23 percent around the closing bell.
Shares of the US data storage company Western Digital Corp and its counterpart Seagate Technology climbed 7.52 percent and 6.57 percent respectively.
Shares of Mastercard extended solid gains throughout the day, up 1.58 percent when the market closed.
The New York-State based payment and technology company earlier announced a deal to buy British payments company Earthport for over 300 million U.S. dollars.
Shares of Discover Financial Services also rose 0.83 percent.
Nine of the 11 primary S&P 500 sectors turned green in the index tally on Friday, with the materials sector up nearly 2 percent, leading the winners.
US congressional leaders and Trump have reached a deal to temporarily reopen the government for three weeks, calling an end to the longest shutdown in U.S. history, Trump announced Friday in remarks at the White House.
The move came after the Senate rejected two proposals to end the shutdown on Thursday, as economic losses have enlarged as roughly 800,000 federal employees began missing their second monthly salaries since Dec. 22, 2018.
Lawmakers will later discuss funds for border security and Trump’s demand for 5.7 billion U.S. dollars for the US-Mexico border wall.
The US Federal Reserve is reportedly considering ending its bond portfolio cutback scheme and is “close” to making a decision, according to The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
The reduction of the bonds the Fed holds on its balance sheet indicates that it would get more capital from financial markets. While calling an end to the reduction move would increase the flow of hot money circulating the market.
Such move indicates that the central bank will possibly loosen to some extend its monetary tightening, which is normally favourable to equities markets.
Investors and analysts are looking forward to what will possibly come out from a two-day policy meeting of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee next week.
