NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street rallied on Tuesday as investors were heartened by a tentative congressional spending deal to avoid another partial federal government shutdown and by optimism surrounding U.S.-China trade negotiations.
All three major U.S. stock indexes posted their biggest one-day percentage gains for the month so far, each advancing more than 1 percent. The S&P 500 ended the session above its 200-day moving average for the first time since early December.
President Donald Trump said he would be willing to let the March 1 tariff deadline slide as top U.S. officials arrived in Beijing for high-level talks later in the week to hammer out a solution to the trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
Congressional negotiators cobbled together a tentative bipartisan border security deal late on Monday to avert another partial government shutdown. However, Trump on Tuesday expressed displeasure with the agreement and said he had yet to decide whether to support it. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security and a host of other agencies is due to expire on Friday.
“It’s a combination of hopes that (a) government shutdown is not going to happen and maybe the March 1 (tariff) deadline isn’t so firm,” said Stephen Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. “People were concerned we were going to see a dramatic increase in tariffs, and those fears have been somewhat allayed.”
The fourth-quarter earnings season is nearing the home stretch, and 71 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported have beaten consensus estimates.
The outlook for 2019, however, is less rosy. First-quarter earnings are now expected to post a
