USA stocks are opening higher, led by gains in big technology companies, which have had a rough start to the ye…
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Energy companies lagged the market as the price of crude oil fell to new 12-year lows.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 104 points, or about 0.6 percent, to 16,503 as of 10:08 a.m. Eastern Time.
The Shanghai gauge rose 0.3 percent to 3,026.54 at 1:15 pm on Tuesday, after swinging around the 3,000 level. The Nasdaq composite climbed 66 points, or 1.4 percent, to 4,704.
With investors still licking their wounds from last year’s plunge in global commodity prices and a sharp sell-off in Chinese markets, 2016 has brought about more pain for investment portfolios in the form of a deepening slowdown in the global economy and volatile Chinese markets.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index jumped 2.9 per cent to 17,715.63 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.5 per cent to 20,199.26. The CAC-40 in France was 2.1 percent higher at 4,405. South Korea’s Kospi added 1.3 percent to 1,916.28.
HOLIDAY BOOST: Lululemon Athletica vaulted 11.3 percent after the athletic clothing retailer raised its earnings guidance citing strong holiday season sales.
In mid-morning NY trading, the dollar was up 0.4 percent against a basket of currencies to 99.078.
GAME OVER: Video game retailer GameStop sank 8.1 percent, the worst performer in the S&P 500 index. Worries over the future of the world’s number 2 economy have lain behind the big falls registered in stock markets around the world at the start of 2016.
Beijing stands by its flag: The People’s Bank of China hasn’t intentionally been trying to weaken the yuan, says Ma Jun, chief economist in the central bank’s research bureau, in comments posted on its website. The Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China fluctuated between gains and losses and was 0.7 percent higher at 3,036.84 by midafternoon.
On Wall Street, stocks ended Tuesday’s session with solid gains after China stepped up efforts to bolster its currency and oil prices recovered from day’s lows.
Other leaders included UnitedHealth Group, up 2.4 percent, and Wells Fargo bank, 2.7 percent.
YUAN MOVES: China’s tightly controlled currency, which was the source of last week’s market turmoil after authorities guided it sharply lower, was little changed.
China’s central bank has held the yuan’s daily midpoint steady in the past few days and used state banks to soak up liquidity in Hong Kong which has made it prohibitively expensive to bet against the yuan offshore.
Yuan deposits in Hong Kong stood at 864.2 billion yuan ($131.35 billion) in November, a bit higher than 854.3 billion yuan a month earlier but still hovering around two-year lows.
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In the onshore debt market, Chinese government bonds gained for a fourth day, pushing the 10-year yield down six basis points to 2.77 per cent as the benchmark money-market rate slipped.
