Investing.com – U.S. stocks traded higher on Friday, on track to a five-week winning streak that brought the blue-chip index into positive territory for the year as oil continued to trade near three-month highs.
At 15:51GMT or 11:51AM ET, the Dow 30 rose 100 points, or 0.58%, while the S&P 500 advanced 8 points, or 0.38%, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite gained 22 points, or 0.46%.
Oil continued a rally throughout most of the session on Friday that pushed the barrel of West Texas above $40 for the first time since December in the prior session on hopes that an agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC members to freeze output would be reached at a meeting scheduled for April 17 in what would be the first global deal in 15 years.
There was relatively little news on Friday, but traders took note of a Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report that suggested that West Texas could rise to $47 a barrel by June due to the upcoming, busy driving season, the drop in the dollar and declining U.S. shale production. However, left out of many of the headlines, these experts added that the price could then fall back to $39 by September.
That said, markets will be wary of the Baker Hughes’ data on U.S. rig count to be released later on Friday. Last week, the data showed that the total number of U.S. oil rigs hit a record low, while the number of active oil drilling rigs fell for a 12th consecutive week.
Crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange pared gains and traded flat at $40.20 a barrel by 15:55GMT or 11:55AM ET, while Brent oil still advanced 0.72% to $41.84, slipping from intraday high of $42.53.
On the macro data front, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index unexpectedly fell for the third consecutive month, hitting a low not seen since last October. The survey’s chief economist Richard Curtin blamed the decline on “concerns about prospects for the economy as well as the expectation that gas prices would inch upward during the year ahead”.
In the first remarks from Fed officials since Janet Yellen’s press conference on Wednesday, New York Fed president William Dudley applauded how bank supervision had brought the financial sector long way since the crisis, while Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren spoke on operational risk management at a bank supervision conference in New York on Friday.
While neither of the two aforementioned Fed members spoke on the economy or monetary policy, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard is expected to comment on both topics in a speech at 18:00 GMT or 14:00ET.
In company news, Tiffany & Co (NYSE:TIF) rose 1.5% as the jewelry retailer beat on quarterly earnings-per-share.
Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) jumped almost 5% after reporting better-than-expected earnings and giving an upbeat guidance.
Outside of earnings, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) jumped more than 2% and was the second-biggest advancer on the Dow, behind Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), after the bank increased its stock buyback program by $1.88 billion.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (NYSE:HOT) gained almost 5% after announcing that, due to what it considered to be a superior offer from China’s Angbang Insurance Group, it would cancel its prior merger agreement with Marriot International (NASDAQ:MAR).