- Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open near record highs on Wednesday, as a largely upbeat corporate earnings season and optimism around a U.S.-China trade truce drive a rally in stocks.
Investors are closely tracking data to assess the fallout of the trade war on the domestic economy. A fresh crop of indicators this week has been mixed, with the ISM services index showing a better-than-expected reading, but nonfarm productivity falling. To some extent, however, those figures reflect the significantly lowered expectations of analysts, who had forecast the first earnings drop since late 2016, and doubts linger about the market’s ability to rally much further this year.