Off the wire
Sharapova confirmed to play in Birmingham grass court event  • EU to accelerate security, defense: Mogherini  • Morocco, U.S.-AFRICOM discuss military cooperation  • 4,000 Boko Haram hostages so far freed in Nigeria: official  • Roundup: 33 Al-Shabaab militants nabbed in Kenya's coast in 4 months  • Roundup: Increasing number of S. Sudanese refugees puts pressure on Sudan  • French shares drop 0.53 pct on Thursday  • Large stocks record gains at Nairobi bourse  • Zambia launches mobile phone survey on non-communicable diseases  • Xinhua Asia-Pacific News Summary at 1600 GMT, May 18  
You are here:   Home

U.S. stocks rebound from biggest selloff of 2017

Xinhua, May 18, 2017 Adjust font size:

U.S. stocks rose in the morning session Thursday, as Wall Street tried to recover from Wednesday's selloff, the biggest one of 2017.

At midday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 57.81 points, or 0.28 percent, to 20,664.74. The S&P 500 rose 9.18 points, or 0.39 percent, to 2,366.21. The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 45.32 points, or 0.75 percent, to 6,056.55.

U.S. equities suffered their worst day so far this year Wednesday, with all three major indices dropping over 1.5 percent, due to the latest turmoil in Washington that triggered market concerns on whether the Trump administration could continue to push its economic reform agenda.

The White House earlier this week pushed back against a new wave of media allegations that Trump might have tried to obstruct justice by asking Ex-FBI Director James Comey to end a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"I hope you can let this go," Trump told Comey at the time, according to a New York Times report, quoting two people who read the memo Comey wrote shortly after meeting with Trump in the Oval Office one day after Flynn resigned over a Russia-related scandal in February.

"The market is responding to the probability that tax reform, infrastructure spending, healthcare reform and trade deals might not occur," Brendan Ahern, chief investment officer of Krane Funds Advisors, told Xinhua.

Even though investors were shocked by the news, analysts said uncertainty in Washington is unlikely to derail the stock rally in the long run.

On the economic front, in the week ending May 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 232,000, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week' s unrevised level of 236,000, according to the U.S. Labor Department Thursday.

The 4-week moving average was 240,750, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week's unrevised average of 243,500. Endite