Investing.com – Wall Street jumped after the opening on Monday, boosted by hopes of an end to the trade war between the U.S. and China after U.S. President Donald Trump extended a deadline for new tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Trump also tweeted that he would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to conclude talks.
The news raised hopes for a substantial agreement between the world's two largest economies, although some -- notably the official Chinese news agency Xinhua --cautioned that there are still differences to resolve.
"It's all about the extension of the trade deadline, it buys us some time and that is a positive," said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.
"There is enormous pressure on the administration to get this out of the way. It might take a few more weeks but I expect some sort of a trade deal to get done."
The S&P 500 rose 15 points or 0.57% as of 9:30 AM ET (14:30 GMT), while the Dow gained 91 points, or 0.35%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 58 points, or 0.77%.
Spark Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ:ONCE) was the leader after the morning bell, surging 120% after Swiss pharma giant Roche offered to acquire the company for $4.3 billion. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) inched up 1.1%, while Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) rose 1.2%, while semiconductor makers Micron (NASDAQ:MU) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) rose 2.5% and 3.3%, respectively
Elsewhere, mining company Cleveland-Cliffs Inc (NYSE:CLF) fell 1.5%, while Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) inched down 0.08%, still depressed by the scale of its writedown of Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC) last week.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.12% to $1,334.45 a troy ounce while crude oil retreated 1.75% to $56.25 a barrel after another tweet from Trump pressuring OPEC not to restrict global supply. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, slipped 0.11% to 96.26.
-Reuters contributed to this story.