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US stocks were mostly higher on Friday, powered by gains in Amazon and Nike, while investors shrugged off fears of a looming US government shutdown.
Amazon rose 1.3 per cent after it raised the monthly fee for its Amazon Prime service, while Nike was up 2.0 per cent after Wedbush analysts upgraded the stock to “outperform”, reports Reuters.
Lawmakers are racing against a midnight deadline to pass a bill to fund government operations through to Feb. 16 and avoid federal agency shutdowns this weekend.
The bill has yet to be approved by the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.
Equity investors have taken such incidents in stride, and their reactions have been largely muted during the past three shutdowns.
At 9:42 am ET (1442 GMT), the S&P 500 was up 7.73 points, or 0.28 per cent, at 2,805.76 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 27.00 points, or 0.37 per cent, at 7,323.04.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 13.87 points, or 0.05 per cent, at 26,031.68. The two biggest drags on the blue-chip index were IBM and American Express.
Oil prices fell more than half a per cent on Friday as a bounce-back in US production outweighed ongoing declines in crude inventories.
Square jumped 4.7 per cent after brokerage Instinet hiked its price target on the stock by $16 to $64, saying 2018 will be a “phenomenal year” due to positive growth in gross payment value.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,423 to 1,122. On the Nasdaq, 1,397 issues rose and 1,063 fell.