US open: Stocks rise as market resumes trading after President's Day

US stocks rose on Tuesday as the market resumed trading after being closed a day earlier for President’s Day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.62%, the Nasdaq increased 1.67% and the S&P 500 was up 2.62% at 1430 GMT.

In economic data, the New York Federal Reserve revealed business conditions in the region remained in negative territory. The Empire State manufacturing index for February rose to negative 16.6 from negative 19.4 in January. Analysts had predicted a reading of negative 10.0.

“Overall, we have no doubt that manufacturing is struggling both regionally and nationally, but the sector as a whole is not in recession and should stabilize over the next few months,” according to Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Elsewhere figures showed China banks extended 2.51trn yuan of new loans in January, beating analysts’ estimates of 19.0trn yuan. In December banks granted 597.8bn yuan of new loans. The growth was seen by many analysts to suggest Beijing is keeping monetary policy loose to turn around the economic slowdown.

In a lift to the oil sector, Saudi Arabia and Russia have agreed to freeze oil output in a meeting in Qatar. Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi met with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak and representatives from Venezuela and Qatar in Doha on Tuesday where they agreed to halt oil production at January levels.

Oil prices were mixed at 1433 GMT, with West Texas Intermediate down 0.13% to $29.68 per barrel and Brent crude up 0.29% to $33.49 per barrel.

Still to come, the NAHB house price index for February will be released at 1500 GMT.

In company news, Pfizer gained after saying it reached an agreement in principle to pay $784.6m to settle a long-running US government investigation over claims its Wyeth unit overcharged government Medicaid health programmes for the heartburn drug Protonix.

ADT Corp. surged after agreeing to be acquired by private-equity outfit Apollo Global Management for about $6.93bn.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs rallied after analysts at JP Morgan upgraded the former from ‘neutral’ to ‘overweight’ and the latter from ‘underweight’ to ‘overweight’.

The dollar rose 0.81% against the pound but fell 0.21% against the euro and dropped 0.68% against the yen.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose three basis points to 1.78%.