Wall Street begins Trump's second term with a drift higher
U.S. stock indexes are drifting higher Tuesday following a mostly encouraging batch of profit reports from big companies.
The S&P 500 was 0.6% higher in early trading, as many markets around the world took tentative steps following Donald Trump's return to the White House on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 188 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.
Trump has promised sweeping moves to reshape global trade and the economy, often at the expense of other countries, but stock indexes in Asia and Europe were mixed amid mostly modest moves. U.S. Treasury yields eased in the bond market, giving back some of the big gains made in recent months that cranked up the pressure on stock markets worldwide.
In the foreign-currency market, the values of both the Mexican peso and Canadian dollar sank after Trump said he expects to put 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting on Feb. 1. The peso fell 1% against the U.S. dollar, and the Canadian dollar slipped 0.6%.
Trump had threatened to place even stiffer tariffs on Chinese imports during his campaign, but he said Monday he wanted to have more discussions with the leader of the world's second-largest economy.
On Wall Street, 3M helped lead the market higher and climbed 3.6% after reporting profit and revenue for the end of 2024 that edged past analysts' expectations The company behind Scotch tape and Command strips also gave forecasts for financial results in 2025 that were roughly in line with analysts' expectations.
Charles Schwab jumped 6% after likewise delivering a better profit report for the end of 2024 than analysts expected. It credited clients pouring more dollars in, as its total client assets rose 19% from a year earlier to $10.10 trillion.
They helped offset a 7.9% drop for Walgreen Boots Alliance. The U.S. Justice Department accused Walgreens late Friday of filling millions of prescriptions without a legitimate purpose, including for dangerous amounts of opioids. In the lawsuit, the government says the drugstore chain's pharmacists filled controlled substance prescriptions with clear red flags that indicated they were highly likely to be unlawful.
Walgreens, one of the country's largest pharmacy chains with over 8,000 locations, said in a statement that it stands behind its pharmacists and "will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with "rules" that simply do not exist."
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased to give back some of the big gains they'd made in recent months amid worries about higher inflation.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.57% from 4.62% late Friday. Like the U.S. stock market, bond trading had been closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were rising slightly across Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.9% after embattled Chinese property developer Country Garden got a reprieve on its deadline for working out an agreement with its creditors.
Source: Associated Press
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