Investing.com – Wall Street opened higher on Thursday as worry over a trade war between the U.S. and China cooled.
The S&P 500 was up 13 points or 0.51% to 2,658.29 as of 9:36 AM ET (13:36 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 162 points or 0.67% to 24,427.19 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite rose over 56 points or 0.80% to 7,098.77
Stockers rose higher as fear of a global trade war between the U.S. and China eased. Investors were upbeat after comments from White House chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow that there was no trade war and the two countries were merely in a “negotiation.”
The fact that none of the tariffs have any time deadline contributed to investor calm.
Technology stocks were higher, with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) gaining 3.82% after CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke to reporters about third party apps scraping data from users without their knowledge. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) inched up 0.54% while Teslas increased 1.67% and Dropbox rose 0.71%. Meanwhile Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) surged 3.60% while Twitter was up 2.02%.
Elsewhere General Electric (NYSE:GE) dipped down 0.11% while semiconductor Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) fell 3.13%.
In Europe stocks were up. Germany’s DAX rose 299 points or 2.50% while in France the CAC 40 increased 108 points or 2.11% and in London, the FTSE 100 was up 123 points or 1.75%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 gained 74 points or 2.23% while Spain’s IBEX 35 surged 191 points or 2.02%.
In commodities, gold futures fell 0.93% to $1,327.80 a troy ounce while crude oil futures increased 0.39% to $63.62 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, rose 0.26% to 90.01.