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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened higher on Friday, on course for their highest weekly close in over a month, on sustained hopes that warring factions in Washington will still cobble together a stimulus package for the economy before the elections in November.
The time for any such package to have any effect on the economy, or even on consumer and business confidence, before the vote is fast running out. That is heaping pressure disproportionately on the administration, given polls showing a widening gap between President Donald Trump and his Democratic Party challenger Joe Biden. Trump had abruptly called off negotiations with House Democrats earlier in the week, only to backpedal over the next 48 hours.
By 9:40 AM ET (1340 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 131 points, or 0.5%, at 28,547 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.6% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.8%.
The most prominent gainer was chipmaker Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX), which rose 17% after The Wall Street Journal reported that it’s in advanced talks to be acquired by rival Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) in a deal that would value it at over $30 billion. The high price tag knocked AMD stock down 2.4%.
