Investing.com - Wall Street was higher on Friday amid news that trade talks between the U.S. and China were going well and would be extended next week.
The S&P 500 rose 19 points, or 0.71%, as of 9:30 AM ET (14:30 GMT), while the Dow gained 125 points, or 0.49%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite increased 41 points, or 0.56%.
President Xi Jinping met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and said after that talks are progressing, according to Chinese state media.
"Next week, both sides will meet again in Washington. I hope you will continue efforts to advance reaching a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement," Xi said.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) was among the top gainers, rising 1%, while Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) gained 0.8% and PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) jumped 2% as an increased dividend outweighed downside guidance for 2019.
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) rose 2% after its earnings beat expectations, while Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) was up 2.1%.
Elsewhere, semiconductor Micron (NASDAQ:MU) slumped 1.5% while Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) inched down 0.2% and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) slipped 0.6%. Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) slumped 4% after its forecast for the second quarter were below expectations.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.5% to $1,320.05 a troy ounce, while crude oil jumped 1.7% to $55.34 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, inched up 0.1% to 96.93.