US stock indexes and oil prices made gains on Wednesday after investors cheered positive economic data and the White House said it was resuming talks on a major social spending bill with a senator crucial to passing the legislation.
The market opened mostly flat on jitters about the Omicron COVID-19 variant but gained throughout the trading session, pushed upward by improving consumer confidence and gross domestic product growth. The positive swing continued Tuesday’s trend, when stocks recouped losses.
The market opened mostly flat on jitters about the Omicron COVID-19 variant but gained throughout the trading session.Credit:AP
“With COVID fears, there’s not as much worry as before,” said Anu Gaggar, global investment strategist for Commonwealth Financial Network. “It may not have as much of an impact on the economy. [US President Joe] Biden has said we won’t go back to lockdown.”
The White House said on Wednesday that it would continue talks with Senator Joe Manchin, who delivered what appeared to be a fatal blow to Biden’s Build Back Better bill over the weekend by saying he would not support it.
Gaggar added that volatility in December has been much higher than usually seen, and that her conviction is that the “Santa Claus rally is slightly lower this year.”
The so-called “Santa Claus rally” is the last five trading days of the year and the first two of the next year, when stocks often are higher. According to an article from LPL Financial, if Santa does not come, it could portend a bear market.
Riskier currencies such as the Australian dollar recovered against the US dollar on Tuesday, while US Treasury traders discounted the threat of long-term inflation as the yield curve flattened.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.49 per cent to 35,668.3, while the S&P 500 gained 0.63 per cent to 4,678.65. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.66 per cent to 15,441.98.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.73 per cent.
