Wall Street’s main indexes edged up on Tuesday, as investors assessed President Donald Trump’s executive orders after taking office, while awaiting his first move on trade policy.
In morning trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 316 points, or 07%, to 43,803.
The S&P 500 gained 0.4%, and the Nasdaq advanced 0.1%.
Trump did not lay out any concrete plans on the universal tariffs and additional surcharges on close trade partners as previously promised, but said he was thinking about imposing duties on Canadian and Mexican goods as early as Feb. 1.
While investors remain cautious about Trump’s tariff policies, which could spark a global trade war and fresh inflation pressures, brokerage Goldman Sachs lowered its forecast for a universal tariff this year to 25% from about 40% seen in December.
The domestically focused small-cap Russell 2000 index rose 1% to touch a one-month high.
Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sectors rose, with real estate leading the gains with a 1.4% increase.
Apple slid 3.7% after brokerage Jefferies cut its rating on the iPhone maker to ‘underperform’.
Automakers General Motors and Ford, which are most sensitive to tariffs due to their vast supply chains, edged up 1.6% and 0.8%, respectively, while Elon Musk-led Tesla dropped 3.1%.
“It’s impossible to know exactly what the Trump administration will do…in the past, tariff rhetoric turned into trade deals that turned into negotiating tactic and it was never universally applied. So, I think the market right now is taking a wait-and-see attitude towards that,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth.
During the first year of Trump’s first administration, the S&P 500 rose 19.4%, while the benchmark index rose nearly 68% through his first term, but saw bouts of volatility, stemming in part from a trade war Trump fought with China.
Last week, the S&P 500 and Dow registered their biggest weekly percentage gains since early November, helped by strong bank earnings and signs that underlying inflation was cooling.
However, inflation is still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, and fueling worries that Trump’s policies could delay the central bank’s pace of monetary policy easing.
Economists see the Fed leaving borrowing costs unchanged when it meets next week and traders see the first interest rate cut coming in July, according to data compiled by LSEG.
3M rose 4.5% after posting upbeat fourth-quarter profits.
Charles Schwab rose 7% after the brokerage firm’s profit rose 44% in the fourth quarter.
Walgreens fell 12% after the Justice Department accused the pharmacy operator of filling unlawful prescriptions for addictive painkillers and other drugs.
Moderna rose 9.3% after securing $590 million from the US to hasten development of its bird flu vaccine.
