U.S. stocks opened higher Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising more than 300 points, after Wall Street snapped a losing streak as the long Christmas weekend nears.
How are stocks trading?
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.09% jumped 333 points, or 1%, to 33,179.
- The S&P 500 SPX, +1.04% rose 29 points, or 0.8%, to 3,850.
- The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.06% gained 54 points, or 0.5%, to trade at 10,601.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500, Dow industrials, and Nasdaq Composite posted modest gains, snapping a four-day string of losses.
What’s driving markets?
Stocks rose after the opening bell, extending gains after Wall Street broke its losing streak on Tuesday.
Markets have brushed aside a surprise monetary shift by the Bank of Japan, where it raised the yield at which it allows bond to trade. The move has been viewed as a first step toward the bank ending its era of ultra easy monetary policy, though BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda described the measure as neither a tightening nor a move toward the exit.
Read: Why the Bank of Japan’s surprise policy twist rattled global financial markets
“The BOJ announcement was a late-year surprise, but while it echoed the hawkish ECB (and that’s why stocks and bonds initially dropped) it isn’t a materially hawkish addition to the macro outlook, and that’s why stocks largely ignored it in the end,” said Tom Essaye, founder and president of Sevens Report Research, in a note Wednesday.
“More broadly, stocks are digesting the declines of the past two weeks,” he said. “While there are some notable employment and inflation numbers looming on Thursday and Friday, the bottom line is the calendar into year-end should be mostly quiet, again barring any material surprises.”
Shares of Nike Inc. NKE, +13.43% jumped more than 14% to lead Dow gainers after the sports retailer’s earnings and sales blew out analysts expectations. Gains for shares of FedEx Corp. FDX, +3.44% may also be boosting sentiment as investors looked past softer-than-expected sales and focused on parcel-delivery service’s profit forecast.
Investors are not ready to let go of the idea that the U.S. economy remains on firmer footing, despite recession worries, said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade, in a note to clients.
“Yes, the concerns are there that going in 2023, we are likely to see a recession taking place in the U.S., which the Fed denies for the time being. But given the robustness of the economy and the resilience in the economic numbers, it is unlikely to anticipate a scenario under which we will see a massive and prolonged period of crisis in the U.S.,” he told clients in a note.
Crude oil prices CL.1, +2.21% were more than 2% at around $78 a barrel, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.653% was down about four basis points at 3.64%, according to FactSet data, at last check.
