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| - Wall Street indices opened higher on Monday, as traders searched for deals after a chaotic week that saw shares of some companies targeted in a social-media fueled buying spree surge. The aftereffects of that frenzy were still being felt, with GameStop plunging in early trading after skyrocketing last week, while silver futures shot up as they apparently became the next target of the campaign organized on Reddit and other platforms. Around 1510 GMT, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4 percent at 30,096.54. The broad-based S&P 500 rose 0.7 percent to 3,739.14, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.0 percent to 13,196.95. Traders were also monitoring developments in Washington, where 10 Republicans senators who have proposed a $600 billion plan to revive the economy and fight Covid-19 are to meet with President Joe Biden, who has his own $1.9 trillion proposal. Republicans have said the president's plan is too expensive, but Biden's Democrats have a narrow majority in Congress and could ram it through, should Republican support not materialize. Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com said that after indices in Europe and Asia closed higher, investors in the United States are looking to buy stocks whose prices fell during last week's uncertainty, pushing indices up. "It was a global, buy-the-dip trade, and that trade is going to carry over to the US market, which is presumably getting some added juice from reports highlighting a pickup in vaccination rates," he said. That enthusiasm did not extend to GameStop, which was down 17.2 percent after soaring 70 percent in Friday trading alone after retail investors herded into the equity in an attempt to hurt hedge funds that had bet on the company collapsing. But it appears those investors had found another target: silver, which was up 9.4 percent, after briefly hitting an eight-year high earlier in the day. cs/bgs
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