Investing.com – Wall Street rose on Monday amid news that China and the U.S. have started trade negotiations, easing fear of a trade war.
The S&P 500 was up 47 points or 1.85% to 2,636.19 as of 9:40 AM ET (13:40 GMT) while the Dow composite increased 463 points or 1.97% to 23,996.62 and tech heavy NASDAQ Composite rose 143 points or 2.06% to 7,136.65.
The U.S and China are negotiating trade agreements to give the U.S. access to Chinese markets, according to various media reports.
China has offered to buy more semiconductors from the U.S., as well as opening up the financial services sector to foreign investment, the Financial Times reported.
Stocks tumbled on Friday after Trump announced tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports in retaliation for China’s unfair seizure of U.S. intellectual property. China responded by imposing tariffs on $3 billion of American exports, which worried investors of a potential trade war.
In other news, the U.S. and other European Union countries have followed the UK in expelling Russian diplomats over the poisoning of a former British-Russian spy in the UK. The Trump administration ordered 60 diplomats to leave and for a consulate in Seattle to close. Moscow has denied any wrongdoing.
File sharing site Dropbox Inc (NASDAQ:DBX) rose 2.00%, as it surged after its Initial Public Offering on Friday. Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) was up 2.17% while Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) increased 2.13% and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) gained 5.12%.
Meanwhile Top Ships Inc (NASDAQ:TOPS) fell 2.60% while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) was down 0.83%. The social media site still faces criticism for breaching data privacy after a third-party targeted 50 million users with political ads without their knowledge.
In Europe stocks were up. In Germany the DAX 40 points or 0.34% while France’s CAC 40 increased 14 points or 0.27% and in London the FTSE 100 was up 25 points or 0.36%. Meanwhile Spain’s IBEX 35 gained 42 points or 0.46% and the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 inched up five points or 0.16%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.13% to $1,351.70 a troy ounce while crude oil futures were down 0.32% to $65.67 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, slumped 0.40% to 88.74.