NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks added to records early Friday, boosted by progress on Capitol Hill on a long-awaited tax cut proposal that offset disappointing earnings from General Electric and Procter & Gamble.
Investors were cheered by a party-line 51-49 vote in the Senate for a federal budget plan that permits the legislative body to pass the tax cut plan with a simple majority vote instead of a 60-person supermajority.
The vote means that “all that now remains to be done is for a majority of Republicans to agree on tax reform,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial.
“Suddenly, the whole thing seems a lot more likely to succeed after all.”
About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 23,226.82, up 0.3 percent.
The broad-based S&P 500 advanced 0.3 percent to 2,569.96, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.4 percent to 6,633.69.
GE dropped 4.3 percent after it reported lower earnings and slashed its profit forecast as weakness in the power and oil and gas businesses continued to weigh on the company.
Procter & Gamble tumbled 3.1 percent after reporting net profit for the fiscal first quarter of 2018 came in at $2.9 billion, up 5.1 percent from the year-ago period.
However, the consumer products giant suffered another fall in sales in its grooming division due to a weak performance in US shaving. Chief executive David Taylor also described global market trends as “decelerating.”
Source: Brecorder.com
