US markets end higher on Tuesday

09 Oct 2024 Evaluate

The US markets ended higher on Tuesday with Nasdaq settling over one percent gain. Pushing geopolitical concerns and interest-rate uncertainty aside, investors picked up stocks, choosing to focus on the earnings season. Palo Alto Networks, up nearly 5 percent, was the top gainer in the Nasdaq. NVIDIA climbed about 3.7 percent, and Synopsis gained 3.2 percent. CoStar Group, Netflix, Broadcom, Autodest, Cadence, Airbnb, Booking Holdings and Adobe advanced 2 to 3 percent. PepsiCo gained about 2 percent. The company announced that its bottom line came in at $2.930 billion, or $2.13 per share, compared with $3.092 billion, or $2.24 per share in last year's third quarter. The numbers, however, beat the Street estimates. ExxonMobil, Valero Energy, Marathon Petroleum Corpoation, Super Micro Computer, Caterpillar, Chevron and American Express were among the notable losers.

On the economic data front, with exports surging and imports falling, the Commerce Department released a report showing the U.S. trade deficit narrowed in the month of August. The Commerce Department said the trade deficit shrank to $70.4 billion in August from a revised $78.9 billion in July. Street had expected the trade deficit to decrease to $70.6 billion from the $78.8 billion originally reported for the previous month. The narrower trade deficit came as the value of imports shot up by 2.0 percent to $271.8 billion, while the value of imports decreased by 0.9 percent to $342.2 billion.

Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 126.13 points or 0.3 percent to 42,080.37, Nasdaq gained 259.01 points or 1.45 percent to 18,182.92 and S&P 500 was up by 55.19 points or 0.97 percent to 5,751.13.