A jump in Boeing shares led Wall Street higher on Wednesday, with investors hopeful of a rebound from a coronavirus disease-led economic slump amid continuing social unrest in the country.
Boeing jumped 8.5 per cent and was the top boost to the blue-chip Dow Jones index.
DJI after billionaire investor Daniel Loeb’s Third Point said it took a stake in the planemaker.
Microchip Technology Inc. surged 10.6 per cent after the chipmaker raised its forecast for current-quarter sales and profit as it begins making up for lost production due to the pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index, IXIC, is about two per cent shy of a record high hit in mid-February, rising in seven of the past eight sessions.
Data on Wednesday showed signs of stabilisation in the domestic labour market after the ADP National Employment Report said private employers laid off another 2.76m workers, less than an expected nine million job losses.
The data came ahead of the Labor Department’s more comprehensive jobs report on Friday and initial jobless claims data on Thursday.
Supporting the mood further was the Institute for Supply Management’s reading, which showed U.S. services industry activity pushed off an 11-year low in May.
“The move is predicated on data that continue to point us in the direction that things are improving overall in the economy as it opens back up,” said Mike Mussio, president at FBB Capital Partners in Bethesda, Maryland. “The ADP and ISM manufacturing numbers were in negative-equivalent territory, but better than they were in April and better than what the estimates were.”
Markets have largely looked past brewing Sino-U.S. tensions and protests in the United States over the death of an unarmed African-American, George Floyd, in the hands of the police. U.S. protesters ignored curfews overnight as they vented their anger, but there was a marked drop in the violence that prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to deploy the military.
At 12.50p.m. (ET), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 390.56 points (1.52 per cent) at 26,133.21, SPX was up 33.09 points (1.07 per cent) at 3,113.91 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 50.83 points (0.53 per cent) at 9,659.20. Ride-hailing firm, Lyft Inc rose 10.2 per cent after reporting a jump in rides on its platform in May from the prior month. Coty Inc jumped seven per cent after the cosmetics maker said it was in talks with reality TV star, Kim Kardashian West, on a possible collaboration for a beauty line.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners for a 3.65:1 ratio on the NYSE and a 2.44:1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded 30 new 52-week highs and no new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 83 new highs and three new lows.
