Wall Street closes higher on hopes that stimulus deal is close
Wall Street closed higher tonight after a day of topsy-turvy trading as investors bet on the prospect of a new stimulus deal being agreed between Congress and the White House.
The Dow Jones rose 0.5 per cent to close at 28,364 points, the S&P 500 shut up the same margin at 3,453 points and the Nasdaq climbed 0.2 per cent.
Talks between Congress Democrats and the Trump administration have been deadlocked for weeks after the initial CARES economic package expired in September.
The two sides have gone back and forth on the size of the deal, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisting that the stimulus should be worth at least $2.2 trillion.
However, she said today that the talks had seen progress and that legislation could be agreed “pretty soon”.
But White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow warned that “significant policy differences” remained.
With the Presidential election less than two weeks away, time for a new deal to be agreed is swiftly running out.
President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden will meet in a final debate tonight as campaigning reaches its closing stages.
Earlier today data from the US Labor Department showed that new claims for unemployment benefits had fallen on the previous week.
There were 787,000 new claims, below last week’s figure of 840,000. However, they remain at higher levels than ever before recorded, in a sign that the US’s economic recovery had stalled.