US open: Stocks hit new highs as Powell testifies
Wall Street's main stock market indices are all setting fresh record highs with traders pushing financials higher as traders listened in on the White House's choice for new Fed chair's testimony before the Senate.
Ahead of that, as of 1646 the Dow Jones Industrials was ahead by 0.54% or 126.78 points to 23,707.52, alongside a 12.94 point advance on the S&P 500 to 2,614.30 and a 0.25% or 17.43 point rise in the Nasdaq Composite to 6,896.66.
From a sector standpoint, the best areas of the stockmarket were: Recreational products (5.09%), Tires (2.72%), Media agencies (1.68%) and Banks (1.67%).
In his testimony before the US Senate's banking committee, Jerome Powell said there were not yet signs of overheating in the wage data. Later on, he would add that some, but not all, labour market indicators were at full-employment.
At another moment during the hearings, he also told the committee that he believed bank sector regulations were already tough enough.
"'Turnaround Tuesday' has seen the FTSE 100 and European markets move higher once again, while in the US the big three have all scored new record highs.
"The second half of November is, once again, proving to be a boon for stocks, while those with an eye on the coming month will note with satisfaction that the average December gain since 1976 for the S&P 500 is around 1.8%," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG.
Tuesday's batch of economic data releases was mixed.
Significantly, the Census Bureau revealed a 6.5% jump in the country's foreign trade on goods to reach $68.3bn (consensus: -$65.3bn), as export growth slipped but demand for imports ramped up.
That saw economists at Barclays Research mark down their tracking estimate for third quarter GDP growth from 2.8% to 2.3%.
Later on, the Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence gauge climbed from 126.2 points for October to 129.5 in November (consensus: 123.5).
House price data for September on the other hand came in a tad shy of expectations, with the FHFA's house price index notching up a rise of 0.3% month-on-month (consensus: 0.5%).
On the corporate side of things, stock in Viking Therapeutics gave back initial gains even after disclosing positive results from a mid-stage trial for a hip fracture treatment.
Retailers were still in focus on the heels of a report from Adobe Systems pegging online sales on Cyber Monday at $6.59bn, for a 16.8% increase on the year-ago period and the most ever.
In another sector, chicken wings, Bloomberg reported that private equity outfit Roark Capital had tabled an improved bid for Buffalo Wild Wings worth $2.4bn or $157 a share, which was up from $150 previously.
Meanwhile, shares of Rockwell Automation was higher even as Emerson having withdrawn its unsolicited bid.
As an aside, according to another Bloomberg report, Japan's Softbank had offered to buy a stake of at least 14% in Uber at a valuation of $48bn - for a 30% discount on its most recent valuation - and to invest an additional $1bn at a valuation of $69bn, Bloomberg reported.