Investing.com – Wall Street rose on Thursday, breaking three straight days of losses amid strong corporate earnings.
The S&P 500 rose 19 points or 0.75% as of 11:20 AM ET (4:20 PM GMT) while the Dow composite increased 188 points or 0.81%. Tech heavy NASDAQ Composite gained 79 points or 1.19%.
Supermarket chain Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT) rose 7.72% after its earning came in stronger than expected, while Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) surged 6.48% when its fiscal results beat expectations. Luxury car maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose 0.86% ahead of the unveil of its highly anticipated semi truck while Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was up 0.93%.
Meanwhile Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE:BBY) slumped 6.21% after its holiday forecast missed expectations and pharmaceutical firm Teva Pharma Industries Ltd ADR (NYSE:TEVA) fell 0.63%. Conglomerate General Electric (NYSE:GE) continued to struggle after it announced a restructuring plan and 50% cut to its dividend on Monday. The firm was down 0.35%.
House Republicans are expected to vote on the tax reform bill on Thursday. Disagreements over the bill and uncertainty over its passage had kept markets on edge this week.
On the data front, initial jobless claims rose higher than expected, while import prices in October rose less than forecast.
In Europe markets were up. In Germany the DAX surged 73 points or 0.56% while France’s CAC 40 jumped 37 points or 0.70% and in London the FTSE 100 rose 18 points or 0.25%. Spain’s IBEX 35 gained 85 points or 0.85%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx was up 19 points or 0.25%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.23% to $1,280.65 a troy ounce while crude oil futures increased 0.27% to $55.48 a barrel. The U.S dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.07% to 93.78.