By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher on Tuesday, reassured by signs that companies are continuing to earn money despite much-heralded problems with supply chain disruptions and higher input prices.
By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT),. the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 100 points, or 0.3%, at 35,358 points. The S&P 500 was also up 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.2%.
Many analysts remain upbeat due to evidence of strength in global demand as much of the world starts to put the pandemic behind it.
"Notable production outages are already improving, including COVID-19-related disruptions to chip production in Southeast Asia and weather-related interruptions to petrochemical plants in the Gulf of Mexico," UBS Global Wealth Management's chief investment officer Mark Haefele wrote in a note to clients. Haefele said he expects only "a modest drag of 1% to our S&P 500 earnings per share growth forecast of 45% this year."
Earlier, the market had had to shrug off signs of a slowdown in a U.S. housing market that has run hot for most of the last 18 months. Building permits fell by more than expected to their lowest in 11 months, while housing starts also fell short of expectations.
Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) stock was one that benefited from dispelling doubt about its outlook, rising 1.1% after the company raised its guidance for the year a little and upheld its forecasts for sales of its Covid-19 vaccine, which was dogged by various problems in the time around its authorization from regulators. Insurance giant Travelers also impressed with its quarterly update, as strong investment returns helped to offset a sharp rise in catastrophe losses, caused chiefly by Hurrican Ida. Travelers (NYSE:TRV) stock rose 2.2%.
Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT) stock rose 1.9% after Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) reassured its clients that the retailer's profit outlook was healthy, arguing that some of the consumer spending patterns that have supported its earnings during the pandemic are likely to have real staying power.
Another stock making conspicuous gains in early trading was Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN), which rose 4.2% after announcing a deal to provide custody services to Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)'s new digital wallet project, Novi. The ongoing rally in crypto currencies, as the U.S.'s first exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin futures started trading, also supported Coinbase stock.
Merck stock rose 1.9% after reports that the UN-backed World Health Organization is planning to buy its antiviral Covid-19 pill for distribution among poorer countries, once it's approved by regulators.
Elsewhere, Alibaba ADRs (NYSE:BABA) rose 3.3% after the Chinese e-commerce giant said it is developing a new generation of powerful datacenter chips, known as the Yitian 710.