Investing.com – Wall Street traded higher on Thursday with the Dow up 100 points and all three major indices hitting record highs as President Donald Trump’s talk of cutting taxes boosted investor sentiment.
At 11:39AM ET (16:39GMT), the Dow Jones gained 129 points, or 0.64%, the S&P 500 rose 14 points, or 0.60%, while the Nasdaq Composite traded up 38 points, or 0.66%.
As Trump met with U.S. airline industry leaders, he promised to be “way ahead of schedule” on lowering the overall tax burden for American business.
“And we're going to announce something, I would say over the next two or three weeks, that will be phenomenal in terms of tax,” Trump said.
The remarks sent the dollar broadly higher and boosted sentiment in equities on hopes that Trump would come through on his campaign promises to reduce corporate taxes.
Also supporting the greenback, weekly jobless claims unexpectedly fell, with the four-week average hitting its lowest point since November 1973 in yet another sign of the solid labor market.
Separately, U.S. wholesale inventories surged in December for a second straight month, as previously reported, and sales recorded their biggest increase since 2011, signs of confidence in the economy amid strengthening domestic demand.
Meanwhile, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard said that interest rates "can remain fairly low in 2017" due to continued fiscal uncertainty from Trump's policies. However, he did suggest that the Fed could begin to consider ending the reinvestment program.
Chicago Fed president Charles Evans will speak later Thursday on the economy and monetary policy.
In earnings news, shares of Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) tumbled 9% as the social media firm reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth since going public in 2013.
Also in the red, Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) slumped 2% as the Dow component registered its seventh straight decline in revenues.
On big moves to the upside, both Kellogg (NYSE:K) and Viacom (NASDAQ:VIA) jumped more than 3% after reporting better than expected profit.
Meanwhile, oil prices were on the rise on the back of bullish sentiment. Even though some commentators felt like a surprise draw of 869,000 barrels on gasoline stockpiles Wednesday in comparison to expectations for a 1.1 million barrel build was a sufficient excuse to explain the upward move in oil prices, they couldn’t deny the bearish implications of a whopping build of 13.8 million barrels.
Head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank Ole Hansen pointed out that the last five consecutive inventory reports were bearish but U.S. crude finished the day higher. Hansen noted the rally after four of the last five reports showed bigger than expected builds and asked the question: “Who is buying?”
On a clearly positive note, Saxo Bank’s expert on Russian oil and gas Nadia Kazakova pointed out Thursday that recent data showed Moscow had achieved its promised cut of 100,000 barrels per day in January and that the full reduction of 300,000 barrels may be achieved ahead of schedule.
U.S. crude futures gained 1.13% to $52.93 by 11:40AM ET (16:40GMT), while Brent oil traded up 0.74% to $55.53.