Stocks Rise After Tariff Hike Postponed

Stocks are closing higher on Wall Street after President Donald Trump held off on raising tariffs on Chinese imports, but gave up much of their gains from earlier in the day and more in Monday’s Stock Market Update.

Technology companies and banks led the way higher Monday. Cisco Systems rose 1.4 percent.

General Electric jumped 6.4 percent after agreeing to sell a biotech business to Danaher for $21.4 billion.

KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 rose 3 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,796. The index has risen for the past four weeks in a row. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 60 points, or 0.2 percent, to 26,091. It was up 209 earlier. The Nasdaq added 26 points, or 0.4 percent, to 7,554.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.67 percent.

Progress in the U.S.-China trade talks helped lift markets broadly in Europe and Asia, where China’s main index, the Shanghai Composite, jumped to an eight-month high.

ANALYST’S TAKE: “I feel like we’re in a position where the president is interested in making deals,” said Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group.

The U.S. election cycle is just around the corner, giving the president an incentive to pursue deals and keep the economy and markets stable, he said. Even so, markets may be too optimistic about what’s possible in any China deal, as negotiations over intellectual property concerns will likely take more time.

Investors need to remain cautious, Cox said, citing soft economic data, including the surprise drop in retail sales in December.

“This is sort of an economic opportunity for investors to rebalance, to get a little less aggressive in their portfolios,” he said.

GE SHEDS WEIGHT: General Electric is selling its biopharma business to Danaher for $21.4 billion. The sale is yet another step down in size for GE. The stock surged 7.1 percent.

GE has been divesting businesses since getting hurt in the financial crisis a decade ago. It slashed its dividend in October and ousted CEO John Flannery. It also plans to downsize its Boston headquarters.

SPARKS: Shares in Spark Therapeutics more than doubled after pharmaceutical giant Roche offered to by the gene therapy company for about $4.8 billion.

Roche is snapping up the company as its rivals also look to gene therapy as a way to build up their potential drug pipelines. The focus is treatment for rare diseases, which often involves very costly drugs.

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS: Carter’s Inc. jumped 8.7 percent after the maker of children’s clothing reported strong profit growth in the fourth quarter and forecast further gains in 2019.

REMEMBER THIS: Western Digital climbed 3.6 percent after the data storage company announced a new flash memory card capable of holding up to a terabyte of information.

ENERGY: Trump criticized the rising price of oil in an early morning tweet, sending prices into a skid. U.S. crude lost 3.1 percent to settle at $55.48 a barrel in New York. Prices are up about 20 percent so far this year. On Friday, oil ended at $57.26 a barrel, the highest level since November 12, when it closed at $59.93.

Brent crude, used to price international oils, fell 3.5 percent to close at $64.76 a barrel in London.