Investing.com - After getting hammered at the start of the month, Wall Street's major indexes attempted to bounce back this week, with the market enjoying a three-day win streak heading into Thursday.
The tentative rebound fueled hopes among market participants that Santa Claus will deliver on his traditional end of year rally.
Since 1950, no month has a stronger average return or has finished higher more often than December.
Markets are slowly growing more optimistic about the chances of a U.S.-China trade deal after a flurry of upbeat news this week pointed to easing tensions between the two economic superpowers.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that Chinese state-owned companies have bought more than 1.5 million tonnes of U.S. soybeans in the first major U.S. soybean purchases in more than six months.
The purchases are the most concrete evidence yet that China is making good on pledges made when Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met on Dec. 1 and agreed to a 90-day ceasefire to negotiate a trade deal.
But markets have been stung by false dawns in the past.
Yoshinori Shigemi, a global market strategist at JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) Asset Management, cautioned against reading too much into trade headlines.
"U.S.-China trade negotiations are subject to very high uncertainty. So lots of headlines come and go, and markets come and go also," he said. "We have to see the evolution of this negotiation."
-- Reuters contributed to this report