Wall Street opened Wednesday with a clear rise, driven by the drop in the price of oil generated by hopes of a peace agreement between the United States and Iran and by renewed interest in artificial intelligence.
In early trading, the Dow Jones rose 0.97%, the Nasdaq gained 0.65% and the expanded S&P 500 index advanced 0.60%.
Wall Street closed in green on Tuesday with new records for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, thanks to the fall in the price of oil and the good reception that the solid business results had in the markets.
The S&P 500 rose 0.81% to 7,259.22 points, while the Nasdaq index gained 1.03% to 25,326.13 points, both at their all-time high level.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.73% to 49,298.25 points.
“Fears of a new escalation of tensions that could have caused oil prices to rise even further” have subsided, estimated Jose Torres of Interactive Brokers.
Oil prices decline
Investors welcomed Washington’s announcement that two commercial ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz, after a two-month blockade.
As a result, oil prices fell by around 4% on Tuesday.
“Reopening Hormuz would solve a lot of things,” said analyst Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management.
This sea route is essential for the passage of hydrocarbons, but also their derivatives and a whole series of products.
“It gives the impression that investors think that both sides of the conflict (the United States and Iran, ed.) want to end it, but that they are simply looking for a way out,” Hogan noted.
The head of US diplomacy, Marco Rubio, assured on Tuesday that the offensive phase against Iran had “ended”, and the ceasefire remains in place despite the drone attacks on the Emirates, attributed to Iran.
After weeks of indifference, Wall Street seems to be taking geopolitical events into account again. For Hogan, this is explained because “the results season has been spectacular”, thus eclipsing everything else, “but it is largely behind us.”
Some business results publications also moved the New York stock market.
E-commerce platform Shopify plummeted more than 15% and Pinterest, for its part, gained 6.86% to $22.28.
