US close: Stocks rise despite political news, third week of fund outflows

Investors continued to move back into Wall Street stocks following the largest drop since September on Wednesday, despite the continuing negative newsflow around the White House and a spate of mixed company results.

The Dow Jones Industrials rose 0.69% to 20,804.04, alongside gains of 0.68% for the S&P 500 to 2,381.73 and gains of 0.47% in the Nasdaq Composite that took it to 6,083.70.

To take note of, a report from the Washington Post published late in the day indicated that a current White House official of significant interest was identified in connectioin with the Russia-US election investigation.

The news knocked the S&P 500 off its intra-day highs, according to traders.

On a separate note, outflows from US equities continued for a third week running to 17 May, to the tune of $8.9bn, according to strategists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch who cited data from EPFR Global.

Front month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures gained $1.05 to $50.33 a barrel on the ICE, even as Baker Hughes reported that the number of oil rigs operating in the States jumped for an 18th consecutive week, rising by eight to 720.

Acting as a backdrop, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of St.Louis said rate-setters' own forecasts for two more interest rate hikes in 2017 might be overly aggressive.

Judging by the reaction from financial markets to the Fed's last hike, which was the opposite of what he had expected, James Bullard said:"This may suggest that the FOMC’s contemplated policy rate path is overly aggressive relative to actual incoming data on U.S. macroeconomic performance."

Meanwhile, the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note edged higher by one basis point to 2.24%.

From a sector standpoint, the best performance was seen in the following industrial groups on Friday: Non-ferrous metals (3.90%), Commercial vehicles (3.07%) and Industrial engineering (2.24%).

Shares of Deere & Co. rocketed after the agricultural equipment manufacturer raised its sales and profit forecasts for the year.
Power company Dynegy was another standout gainer after the Wall Street Journal said it had received a takeover approach from rival Vistra Energy.

Investors also cheered stronger than expected profits and guidance out of semiconductor equipment manufacturer Applied Materials.

Shares of Campbell Soup on the other hand ended the day moderately lower after its latest quarterly figures fell short of analysts' estimates.

Stock in Foot Locker plummeted after the sporting goods retailer posted a 0.4% improvement in its first quarter like-for-like sales (consensus: 1.4%).

Dow Jones - Risers

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) $102.43 2.21%
General Electric Co. (GE) $28.05 2.07%
Boeing Co. (BA) $180.76 1.89%
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) $78.77 1.59%
United Technologies Corp. (UTX) $121.16 1.50%
Chevron Corp. (CVX) $106.52 1.28%
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (DD) $77.82 1.01%
JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) $84.78 0.98%
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) $45.42 0.84%
Visa Inc. (V) $92.48 0.84%