While you were sleeping: Nasdaq climbs to record

Wednesday 28th December 2016

Wall Street gained, pushing the Nasdaq to a record high, while oil prices also moved higher ahead of planned production cuts.

In 12.10pm trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.5 percent. In 11.54am trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.3 percent.

The Nasdaq rose to a record high 5,512.37.

The Dow moved higher as advances in shares of Apple and those of Cisco, recently trading 0.9 percent and 0.7 percent higher respectively, outweighed declines in shares of Boeing and those of Procter & Gamble, each down 0.5 percent recently.

“December was quite a run for markets, and now everyone is waiting to see whether the Dow Jones touches the 20,000 level,” Benno Galliker, a trader at Luzerner Kantonalbank AG in Lucerne, Switzerland, told Bloomberg.

“After such a run, everyone is a bit fearful whether we are the height of the market and we’ll see a correction or the rally will continue,” Galliker noted. “We still need to see better earnings and the new President Trump doing the right thing in the first days of his term.”

Shares of Amazon climbed, last up 1.4 percent as of 12.29pm in New York. The online retailer said that the 2016 holiday was its “best-ever season” with more than one billion items shipped worldwide to its Prime members.

Indeed, US consumers are upbeat. A Conference Board report showed its consumer confidence index rose more than expected, climbing to 113.7 in December from an upwardly revised 109.4 last month.

“The post-election surge in optimism for the economy, jobs and income prospects, as well as for stock prices which reached a 13-year high, was most pronounced among older consumers," Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, said in a statement.

“Consumers’ assessment of current conditions, which declined, still suggests that economic growth continued through the final months of 2016,” Franco said. “Looking ahead to 2017, consumers’ continued optimism will depend on whether or not their expectations are realised.”

Meanwhile, oil rose ahead of output cuts that will take effect on January 1, as agreed between Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers.

"Some of the doubts [in OPEC] people are showing are going to have to be put to rest," Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, told Reuters. "There's a strong possibility that we're going to rally into the end of the year."

Both US and Brent crude added 1.7 percent.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index ended the day with a 0.2 percent gain from the previous close. France’s CAC 40 Index and Germany’s DAX Index each increased 0.2 percent.

UK markets were closed.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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