By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com - U.S. stocks closed higher in New York on Friday, with participants balancing the future path of the Ukraine war after a key phone call between the U.S. and Chinese Presidents.
President Joe Biden talked to his counterpart in China, Xi Jinping, for two hours Friday morning. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Biden planned to warn Xi that the U.S. will retaliate against China if its - so far only verbal - support of Russia morphs into something more substantial. U.S. officials claim that Russia asked China for military aid earlier, a request that is likely to have become more urgent, given the heavy losses of equipment that it has sustained due to surprisingly fierce Ukrainian resistance.
The U.S. approved $800 million in military aid, including sophisticated drone weaponry, to Ukraine earlier this week.
Biden was expected to warn Xi against any efforts to weaken the economic sanctions that the West has imposed on Russia since its invasion three weeks ago. Biden will travel to Europe next week to attend a summit of NATO members.
By 4:19 PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 274 points, or 0.8%, while the S&P 500 was up 1.1% and the Nasdaq was up 2%. All three indices had made solid back-to-back gains over the last two days in a relief rally that followed the Federal Reserve's first interest rate hike in three years.
However, there is little on the data calendar after a busy week for economic news, existing home sales for February being the sole indicator of note.
GameStop (NYSE:GME) reported a surprise loss for the holiday quarter after the bell on Thursday. Analysts had expected a profit of 85 cents a share.
Porsche (OTC:POAHY) CEO Oliver Blume said it had been in talks with Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) about possible projects. The news revived interest around Apple's long-awaited-but-never-confirmed foray into automobiles.
Elsewhere, the dollar pushed back toward a two-year high against the yen after the Bank of Japan warned of a possible hit to the Japanese economy from a war that could lead to higher raw material prices. BoJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda indicated that he wasn't concerned about the weakness of the yen, however.
Crude oil prices also continued to push higher amid fears that the war could drag on and even intensify. The U.S. warned Russia against using chemical weapons, a move that some analysts see as possible, given the struggles of Russia's conventional forces. U.S. crude futures were up 1.8% at $104.81 a barrel, while Brent was up 1.1% at $107.84 a barrel.
Gold futures were down 1.2% at $1,919 an ounce.
This story was originally published at 7:17 AM ET and updated