Major US equity indices witnessed a flat to a mildly positive opening this Thursday as investors stayed on the sidelines and awaited the latest trade-related developments.
The US and Canada continued trade talks in an effort to resolve differences toward recasting the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while the US President Donald Trump has already indicated that he is prepared to move forward with Mexico. This comes amid looming deadline for the new US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, which ends today, with some reports suggesting that Trump could impose the tariffs as soon as this week.
Meanwhile, a duo of labour market reports, released this Thursday, though were mixed, reflected the underlying strength in the labour market, albeit did little to provide any meaningful bullish impetus. The US initial weekly jobless claims fell to their lowest level since 1969 and largely negated slightly weaker ADP report, showing that the economy added 163K private-sector jobs in August.
Today’s subdued action comes on the back of a rather volatile trading session on Wednesday, when tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell over 1% on worries over stricter regulation on companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google.
At the time of writing this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed back above the 26,000 round figure mark, gaining nearly 60-point, while the broader S&P 500 Index treaded water near yesterday’s closing level, around 2,889. Meanwhile, Nasdaq continued with its underperformance and slipped over 5-points to 7,990.
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