U.S. stocks traded higher early Thursday as stocks climbed in apparent optimism centered on the prospect of fresh U.S.-China trade talks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.50% rose 160 points, or 0.6%, at 26,159, with a gain on the day representing the index's longest string of wins since the four-day stretch ended Aug. 29 and a retake of the psychologically significant 26,000 level. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.49% advanced by 0.5% at 2,904 and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.80% climbed 0.9% at 8,028, reversing some of the recent weakness in the technology-and-internet-heavy benchmark. A report late Wednesday from the Wall Street Journal said that the Trump administration is giving Beijing another chance to try to stave off new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese exports. In economic data, the consumer-price index rose by 0.2% in August, its fifth straight increase. Economists polled by MarketWatch had predicted a 0.3% gain. Separately, jobless claims fell slightly in the latest week, holding at a 49-year low. Separately, Turkey's central bank raised its interest rates by 6.25 percentage points, with that move coming amid fears that a deterioration in the lira USDTRY, -4.0696% could result in a currency crisis that could spillover to the rest of the world. The rate hike was seen as possibly alleviating some of those pressures. Separately, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England kept their monetary policy unchanged.
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