By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened the week higher, ahead of what's likely to be a busy few days dominated by the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting and the first-quarter earnings of the U.S.'s biggest tech companies.
By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 100 points, or 0.3%, at 34,144 points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were up in parallel.
Notable among early gainers were airline stocks, after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the New York Times that the EU is likely to allow fully-vaccinated U.S. travelers into the bloc, although she didn't give a precise timeline. American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) stock rose 2.6%, while Delta stock rose 2.0% and United Airlines stock was up 1.0%,
Among the underperformers, Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock fell 2.0% after U.S. regulators said they would lift the temporary advisories warning against Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)'s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine at the weekend.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was another underperformer after it announced plans to invest $430 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, a move that underlined the high cost of re-jigging its supply chain away from China so that it is less exposed to geopolitical and logistical risks. Apple stock fell 0.5%.
Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) stock rose 3.6% after JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) gave an indirect boost to the legitimacy of the cryptocurrency sector, Coindesk reporting that the Wall Street blueblood is planning to offer private banking clients an actively-managed Bitcoin fund. That’s a major turnaround in thinking from the days when chief executive Jamie Dimon was labelling Bitcoin a ‘dangerous fraud’.
Earlier, the market had barely reacted to news that core durable goods orders picked up in March, rising 1.6% after a 0.3% gain in February. Excluding 'lumpy' aerospace and defense orders, the gain was a slightly less impressive 0.9%.