Fed governors may dissent against Powell amid Trump pressure - WSJ’s Timiraos
(For a live blog on the U.S. stock market, click LIVE/ or
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* Beijing open to agreeing to a partial trade deal - BBG
* China offering extra U.S. agriculture purchases - FT
* Apple, chipmakers rise in premarket trading
* J&J falls after jury says company must pay $8 bln in
damages
* Futures up: Dow 0.67%, S&P 500 0.81%, Nasdaq 0.89%
(Adds comments, updates prices)
By Arjun Panchadar
Oct 9 (Reuters) - Wall Street was set to open higher for the
first time in three sessions on Wednesday, as latest media
reports raised hopes of progress in high-level trade talks
between the United States and China after a turbulent start to
the week.
Companies with a large exposure to China rose in premarket
trading. Apple Inc AAPL.O was up 1.1%, while chipmakers Nvidia
Corp NVDA.O , Intel Corp INTC.O and Advanced Micro Devices
Inc AMD.O gained about 1.5% each.
China was still open to agreeing to a partial trade deal
with the United States, Bloomberg reported, despite the
inclusion of top Chinese artificial intelligence startups in a
trade blacklist. Separately, the Financial Times said Beijing was offering to
increase its annual purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
U.S. and Chinese deputy officials began trade negotiations
in Washington on Monday, with high-level discussions scheduled
to start on Thursday. "There are expectations that some sort of an interim deal
will emerge from these meetings," said Peter Cardillo, chief
market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.
"Investors certainly seem more hopeful now than they did two
days ago."
U.S.-listed Chinese stocks gained after falling in the
previous session, with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd BABA.N ,
JD.com Inc JD.O and Baidu Inc BIDU.O up between 1.5% and
1.7%.
Escalating trade tensions, intensifying efforts to impeach
President Donald Trump and signs of slowing economic growth
rocked equity markets in October, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones
indexes off 3% since the end of September.
A sharp contraction in U.S. manufacturing data, as well as a
dismal reading on business activity last week has now raised
bets of a third interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this
year.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell flagged openness to further rate
cuts on Tuesday, repeating that the central bank would act "as
appropriate" amid an economy that he said was likely to continue
to expand. Investors are now focused on the third-quarter earnings
season, which begins next week with U.S. banks reporting.
Analysts expect the worst quarterly profit performance since
2016, with earnings for S&P 500 companies estimated to fall
nearly 3% from a year earlier, based on IBES data from
Refinitiv.
At 8:37 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis 1YMcv1 were up 174 points,
or 0.67%. S&P 500 e-minis EScv1 were up 23.5 points, or 0.81%
and Nasdaq 100 e-minis NQcv1 were up 67.5 points, or 0.89%.
Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N fell 2% after a Philadelphia jury
said the company must pay $8 billion in punitive damages to a
man over his claims that it failed to warn that young men using
its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could grow breasts.