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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened on higher on Friday and were on course to end the week in positive territory, after comments from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and strong earnings from diverse companies offered an antidote to weak labor market data on Thursday.
By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 33 points, or 0.1% at 31,526 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.4%.
The moves came against a background of ever bolder ‘reflation’ trades, as comments by Yellen to CNBC again encouraged investors to move out of long-dated bonds and into equities. The 30-year Treasury bond yield rose as high as 2.11%, while the 10-year note yield again tested a 12-month high of 1.33%.
Yellen had again stressed the importance of delivering both fiscal and monetary stimulus in large measure, in view of the sustained high level of unemployment and hardship due to the pandemic
“Inflation has been very low for over a decade, and you know it’s a risk, but it’s a risk that the Federal Reserve and others have tools to address,” she told CNBC. “The greater risk is of scarring the people, having this pandemic take a permanent lifelong toll on their lives and livelihoods.”
