NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks mostly rose early Wednesday, shaking off the prior session’s losses as worries about oil prices moderated and a US employment report beat expectations.
CFRA Research’s Sam Stovall cited President Donald Trump’s pledge to direct the Navy to provide safe passage to oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway where traffic has slowed considerably since the US-Israeli siege on Iran, sending oil prices higher.
“It seems as if the market is shaking off some of the uncertainty surrounding Iran,” Stovall said.
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About 10 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.2 percent at 48,428.69.
The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.1 percent at 6,820.91, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.4 percent to 22,594.55.
Meanwhile, a report showed private employers added 63,000 jobs in February, more than the 48,000 that economists projected, according to payroll firm ADP.
The ADP figures marked a “continuation of the upward trend in job growth since the end of last year,” said a note from Oxford Economics. “This supports our assumption for broad labor market stabilization.”
But Oxrod added that “an emerging risk is whether heightened policy uncertainty from geopolitical events and tariff changes undermines business confidence and reduces hiring intentions, particularly for small firms.”
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