NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks hit one-month highs worldwide on Thursday as improved risk appetite led investors away from safe-haven assets such as bonds and gold on renewed hope for progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations and upbeat U.S. economic data.
The announcement that top negotiators from the United States and China will meet early October in Washington raised hopes of a possible resolution to the two countries’ brutal trade war that has wreaked havoc on the global economy.
“Optimism rules the day on the potential for some sort of trade deal between now and year-end,” said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia. “People had been pessimistic but moods can shift in a second, and they have.”
“We’re in a headline-driven market and the headlines over the last couple of days have been pretty positive,” Tuz added.
U.S. private payrolls increased in August at their fastest pace in four months, according to ADP, blowing past analyst estimates ahead of Friday’s more comprehensive jobs report from the Labor Department.
A separate report showed the U.S. services industry rebounded last month to its fastest expansion since February, bouncing back from a three-year low, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s non-manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 446.4 points, or 1.69%, to 26,801.87, the S&P 500 gained 41.5 points, or 1.41%, to 2,979.28 and the Nasdaq Composite added 138.85 points, or 1.74%, to 8,115.73.
European and emerging markets stocks jumped on hopes that next month’s U.S.-China trade talks would move the world’s two largest economies closer toward ending their cantankerous dispute, which has
