The Nike stock jumped off the starting blocks on Wednesday in the first trading minutes on Wall Street. The sporting goods maker benefited from better-than-expected quarterly figures and was rewarded for this by investors.

Attention will also be paid to figures on economic activity in the United States that will be released later.

The leading Dow Jones index climbed 0.5 percent to 27,418 points in early trading. The broad S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent to 3318 points, and tech gauge Nasdaq lost 0.3 percent to 10,925 points.

Nike rose by nearly 11 percent to a new record level. The company has benefited in recent months from sharply increased sales through its own webshop.

Sportswear makers Under Armor and Lululemon Athletica and sportswear retailer Foot Locker rallied in the wake of Nike with profits of up to 5 percent.

Tesla (minus 4.2 percent) continued to lose stock market value after losing the day before. CEO Elon Musk of the maker of electric cars announced at the Battery Day event that the production of the new cheaper batteries and the affordable electric car will still be a few years away.

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) rose 0.8 percent. The pharmaceutical company starts testing his experimental corona vaccine on 60,000 subjects. Subsidiary Janssen is developing the vaccine in Leiden.

The intention is that the first results will be published by the end of this year and that a vaccine must be ready for emergency use by the beginning of next year.