Investing.com – Wall Street was higher on Wednesday, with market sentiment boosted on hopes that the U.S. and China will strike a trade deal soon.
The S&P 500 rose 32 points, or 1.2%, as of 9:35 AM ET (14:35 GMT), while the Dow increased 289 points, or 1.2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 89 points, or 1.3%.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Reuters that he would intervene in the recent arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou if it would help close a trade deal with China, boosting expectations that the two countries would come to terms.
"This does discreetly imply that it is possible that the Trump administration is starting to recognize some of the detrimental impacts that the long-standing U.S.-China trade tensions can have on the U.S. economy," Jameel Ahmad, global head of currency strategy & market research at FXTM, said in a client note.
Sentiment was also helped by headlines that China is preparing a policy to increase the access of foreign companies to its market.
Markets have grown jittery over the last few weeks over a growing clash between the world's two largest economic powers and after a threat from Trump to shut down the government before Christmas.
Technology stocks rallied, with the S&P 500 Information Technology index up 1.4%. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) rose 0.5%, while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) gained 0.9% and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) jumped 1.9%.
Elsewhere, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) fell 0.3%, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) slumped 1.7% after SoftBank announced plans to sell its stake in the company next year. Semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) was down 0.6%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.3% to $1,250.85 a troy ounce and crude oil jumped 1.5% to $52.44 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.3% to 97.04.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.