By Shreyashi Sanyal
Dec 13 (Reuters) – Wall Street was set to open higher on Friday on hopes that the United States and China would reach an initial deal to end their trade war after Washington set its terms for an agreement, just days before fresh levies on Chinese goods kick in.
The United States has offered to suspend some tariffs on Chinese imports and cut others in exchange for Beijing’s buying more American farm goods, U.S. sources said, although there has been no official announcement on the deal from either side.
China will give a news briefing at 10:30 p.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET) on the state of trade discussions with the United States, China’s State Council Information Office said on Friday. The new round of tit-for-tat tariffs takes effect on Sunday.
“Markets look set to build on gains with more record levels as optimism grows that two of the major sores on the global economy may be closer to coming to some form of resolution,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets in London.
“While this is welcome news, it doesn’t appear that China is completely on board.”
A positive tone on trade helped Wall Street’s main indexes touch record levels on Thursday, while futures hit all-time highs earlier in the session on Friday.
The S&P 500 index is also up more than 26% in 2019, putting it on track for its best annual performance in six years, helped by interest rate cuts and some relief in corporate profits.
Shares of chipmakers that are heavily exposed to China for revenue were up in premarket trading. Micron Technology Inc , Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia Corp rose between 1.2% and 2%.
Apple Inc, often considered sensitive to news around trade, also edged up 0.6%.
Broadcom Inc dropped 1.5% as analysts were wary of the chipmaker’s revenue forecast for 2020.
At 8:39 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 104 points, or 0.37%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 10 points, or 0.32% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 35.75 points, or 0.42%.
Adobe Inc rose 2.6% after the company beat analysts’ estimates for fourth-quarter revenue and profit. (Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
