Wall Street Gains On Xi/Biden Talks

Wall Street's three major indexes closed higher on Friday, with the biggest boost from recently battered technology stocks, after talks between President Xi Jinping and US leader Joe Biden over the Ukraine crisis ended without big surprises.

Investors were also relieved by slowing gains in oil prices as they continued to digest the Federal Reserve's Wednesday interest rate increase and its aggressive plan for further hikes aimed at combating soaring inflation.

"The read out from the meeting was as expected," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York regarding the Xi/Biden talks. He said that since Russia/Ukraine talks were continuing, investors were tending toward optimism.

"Regarding Russia, Ukraine, the market has been more positive on news from the diplomatic front than negative on the escalation."

Hogan also cited calmer oil prices and relief that the highly anticipated Fed news was finally out.

"Instead of having fears and trepidation of what the Fed might do we have clear roadmap for monetary policy," he said.

In addition to less onerous than expected Fed actions, Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Connecticut said investors were reassured that US crude oil prices weren't too far above US$100 on Friday after recently surpassing US$130.

"At least for this week oil has found a level. That's someway positive for the market as a rising oil price is overweighted in consumer minds as an inflationary indicator," said Sosnick. "Does the market like oil around US$100? No. But is it happier that it's around US$100 than going up US$20 every day? Of course."

The Dow Jones rose 0.8 percent, to 34,755, the S&P 500 gained 1.17 percent, to 4,463 and the Nasdaq Composite added 2.05 percent, to 13,894.

Wall Street's three main indexes boasted their biggest weekly percentage gains since early November 2020 with the S&P adding 6.2 percent while the Dow rose 5.5 percent and the Nasdaq jumping 8.2 percent. (Reuters)