The stock exchanges in New York are open higher on Friday. Investors on Wall Street processed a better-than-expected job report from the US government.
There was also optimism about trade negotiations between the United States and China, now that Beijing is going to grant exemptions for import duties on some American agricultural products.
Shortly after opening, the Dow-Jones index was up 0.9 percent on 27,912 points. The broad S&P 500 increased 0.8 percent to 3141 points, and the technology level meter Nasdaq won 0.8 percent to 8638 points.
According to the Ministry of Labor, 266,000 jobs were added in November. Economists generally counted on 183,000 new jobs. The jobs report is being closely monitored by the financial markets, partly because of developments in the labour market influence the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy.
The Chinese Ministry of Finance announced that individual importers do not have to pay additional taxes on, for example, US soy and pork. Those higher rates had previously been introduced as retaliation for trade barriers that the White House had raised during the trade war. This can be seen as a signal that the US and China are coming closer together in trade negotiations.
Companies that are usually susceptible to trading troubles were among the winners. Chip funds such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Micron Technology and Nvidia increased to 1.8 percent. Machine builder Caterpillar gained 1.3 percent, and Apple advanced 1.1 percent.
Uber Technologies (minus 1.5 percent) could also count on attention. The company behind the taxi app of the same name announced last year that it had received more than 3000 reports of cross-border sexual behaviour by drivers or passengers using the platform.
