New York: Healthy bank earnings helped lift Wall Street at open on Wednesday, putting US stocks on track for a second straight day of gains..Investors showed continued appetite for equities, shrugging off a set of worries about trade wars and geopolitics that had sent stocks plummeting in late 2018.
About 10 minutes into day's trading, benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4 per cent at 24,164.76.
while broader SP 500 gained 0.3 per cent to 2,618.24.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.4 per cent to 7,050.51.Investment bank Goldman Sachs jumped four per cent after beating expectations, posting fourth-quarter profits of $2.3 billion even though revenues were flat year-over-year.Bank of America shares soared five per cent after likewise beating estimates to post quarterly net profits $7.04 billion despite weaker revenues.Patrick OHare of Briefing-.com said Wednesday that markets had mostly set aside earlier year-end worries about slowing global growth, Federal Reserve interest rate hikes and US-China trade war.
Its fair to say that no-confidence vote in US stock market in December has been supplanted with a vote of confidence in early 2019, he wrote.
Asset manager Black-Rock added 3.4 per cent despite falling short of Wall Streets earnings expectations.But shares in Ford, secondlargest US automaker, fell 0.9 per cent after company announced it would post $112 million loss for fourth quarter, but after charges stemming from drive to cut $11 billion in costs, it would still post a profit.