The stock exchanges in New York are open on Thursday with small gains. Investors on Wall Street focus mainly on US-Chinese trade talks in Beijing and some macroeconomic data. The maker of sports and yoga clothing Lululemon Athletica jumped more than 14 percent, thanks to better-than-expected quarterly results and good profit forecasts for the entire financial year.
Shortly after the start, the Dow-Jones index was 0.2 percent higher at 25,689 points. The broad S&P 500 won 0.2 percent to 2811 points and the Nasdaq technology fair climbed 0.1 percent to 7651 points.
The American finance minister Steven Mnuchin and trade envoy Robert Lighthizer have arrived in the Chinese capital for trade negotiations. They indicated that they were looking forward to “productive meetings” with Chinese negotiators.
New figure on economic growth was revealed in the fourth quarter of 2018. The growth of the world’s largest economy was 2.2 percent on an annual basis. An earlier estimate reported an improvement of 2.6 percent. Economists had predicted an adjustment to 2.3 percent on average.
Other companies that came up with results were, for example, business service provider Accenture (plus 4 percent) and PVH (plus 14.7 percent), the parent company of fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
Lesley Woutersen, one of the co-founders of the EconomicInform gives away all of his free time to the project. He is interested in stock exchange and digital assets. Lesley can be reached by lesley.woutersen@economicinform.com.