Wall Street Soars as U.S.-China Trade Hopes Lift Markets; Nasdaq Jumps 1.9%
Wall Street rallied amid optimism over a potential U.S.-China trade deal ahead of President Donald Trump?s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said talks with Chinese officials in Malaysia created a ?very successful framework? for the discussions, with expectations that China will resume U.S. soybean purchases and delay rare earth export controls.
Adding to the upbeat mood, Trump voiced confidence about a trade breakthrough after signing separate deals with Malaysia and Cambodia. Hopes for a Fed rate cut also fueled gains, as the CME FedWatch Tool shows a 97.8% chance of a quarter-point cut this week and a 93% chance of another in December.
Semiconductor stocks turned in some of the market's best performances on the day, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index surging by 2.7%. Qualcomm (QCOM) helped lead the sector higher, spiking by 11.1% after announcing new artificial intelligence accelerator chips to compete with Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Telecom stocks were considerably strong, as reflected by the 1.4% gain posted by the NYSE Arca North American Telecom Index. Transportation, steel and software stocks too were notably strong while gold stocks moved sharply lower along with the price of the precious metal.
Asia-Pacific stocks moved notably higher. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index surged by 2.5% while China's Shanghai Composite Index jumped by 1.2%. The major European markets showed more modest moves to the upside on the day while the German DAX Index rose by 0.3%, the French CAC 40 Index crept up by 0.2% and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index inched up by 0.1%.
In the bond market, treasuries regained ground over the course of the session after seeing early weakness. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note which moves opposite of its price, closed unchanged at 3.99% after reaching a high of 4.03%.
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