AUTO REFRESH ON Wall Street check The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged higher on Tuesday after White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said a meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart on Saturday was an opportunity to “turn the page” on a trade war. All three of Wall Street’s major indexes reversed losses following Kudlow’s comments days ahead of the high-stakes dinner between Trump and Xi Jinping after the G20 summit in Buenos Aires. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 108.49 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 24,748.73, the S&P 500 gained 8.75 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 2,682.2 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.85 point, or 0.01 per cent, to 7,082.70.
Among key factors heading into Wednesday's trade, markets will look out for the conflicting signals on prospects for de-escalating the China-US trade dispute. That apart, investors will also turn attention to a speech on Wednesday by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for further clues on how many more times the US central bank is likely to raise interest rates.
SGX Nifty
SGX Nifty was trading firm at 10,722 levels, up 31 points, or 0.3 per cent at 8 am Indian Standard Time.
ASIAN MARKETS
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan see-sawed between positive and negative territory and last was flat. Australian and South Korean stocks were both down 0.2 per cent. Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.7 per cent. Chinese indices shed small early gains.
OIL PRICES
Oil prices rose on Wednesday ahead of an OPEC meeting next week at which the producer club is expected to decide some form of supply cut to counter an emerging glut.
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $52.00 per barrel, up 44 cents, or 0.9 percent from their last settlement. International Brent crude oil futures had yet to trade.
STOCKS TO WATCH
Punjab National Bank and YES Bank will be in focus today. Fitch Ratings affirmed PNB's Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at BBB- and its Viability ratings at 'b' while removing it from Rating Watch Negative. However, Moody's Investors Service downgraded YES Bank's foreign currency issuer ratings to Bal from Baa3 with changing the outlook to negative from stable.
RUPEE
The rupee recovered by 8 paise to close at 70.79 against the US dollar on Tuesday on increased selling of the greenback by exporters and softening crude oil prices.
(with Reuters input)