US open: Small gains on Wall Street after consumer confidence unexpectedly dips

Stocks on Wall Street extended their bounce from the previous day's trading, amid a slightly more positive tone to news on the global trade front.

As of 1530 BST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.19%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq had gained 0.04% and 0.03%, respectively.

Commenting on the market backdrop, Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said, "Naturally, the prospect of a trade war between the world's largest economies has weighed heavily on risk appetite over the last couple of weeks with US equity markets posting significant losses on Thursday and Friday as things heated up. The message over the weekend though was far less confrontational and suggested the US would be open to scrapping the tariffs in exchange for certain other concessions such as reduced tariffs on important cars.

"Ultimately, Trump's target was and remains to reduce the county’s sizeable trade deficit with a number of countries and while he may give the impression that a trade war is a worthwhile sacrifice, I’m not sure he’s as keen on it as he makes out. The question now is how big a concession other countries are willing to make to appease him, if any, and whether it will be sufficient enough for him to sell it to US voters as a worthwhile victory. Given the reaction we’ve seen in markets over the last couple of week’s I don’t think he'll be keen to follow through on his threats and risk sending markets into a tailspin."

Tuesday's economic schedule was rather sparse, although S&P reported that its 20-city home price index advanced at a 0.8% month-on-month clip in January (consensus: 0.6%), for a year-on-year rate of advance of 6.4% (consensus: 6.1%).

Seperately, consumer confidence in the US deteriorated unexpectedly throughout March, the Conference Board institute said on Tuesday, dipping to 127.7 from a downwardly revised 130.0 seen in February, surprising economists who had expeced the indext to expand to 131.0 from the original 130.8 figure.

"Consumer confidence declined moderately in March after reaching an 18-year high in February," said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board's director of economic indicators.

On the corporate front, Linux provider Red Hat was jumping sharply higher following the release of the company's stronger-than-expected fourth quarter figures overnight.

McCormick also pleased investors, posting first quarter earnings per share of $1, ahead of a consensus $0.90, as management also guided towards full-year EPS in a range of between $4.85 and $4.95.

Lam Research was also in the spotlight after analysts at Mizuho initiated coverage of the semiconductor equipment manufacturer at 'buy'.