US open: Stocks rise after weak September CPI, Trump in the spotlight
Stocks are holding on to slight gains heading into the weekend despite inflation data for last month that was shy of market estimates.
As of 1651 BST, the Dow Industrials was climbing 0.17% or 38.24 points to 22,879, with the S&P 500 up by 0.19% or 4.90 points to 2,556 alongside it and the Nasdaq Composite adding 0.31% or 20.91 points to trade at 6,612.
In parallel, front month West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures were trading higher by 1.56% to $51.41 a barrel on the NYMEX.
From a sector standpoint, the best performing areas of the market are: Industrial suppliers (2.28%), Iron & Steel (1.97%) and Industrial Metals (1.93%).
To take note of, investors were also waiting on president Donald Trump's decision, expected later in the day, on whether to certify or not that the 2015 Iranian nuclear arms control deal was in the best interests of the country.
Headline consumer prices in the US picked up to a 2.2% clip year-on-year in September, according to the Department of Labor, versus the 2.3% gain economists had penciled in on the back of the expected impact from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. That was despite a 6.1% surge in energy costs.
So-called 'core' inflation also misses projections for an advance of 1.8%, increasing instead at a 1.7% pace, the same as last month.
Friday's weak reading on inflation saw the yield on the benchmark 10-year US government bond was down by four basis points to 2.28%.
Commenting on the possible implications of Friday's CPI data, Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said: "Just as the Fed first went into quantitative easing blind, the return to normalisation has been far from conventional or straightforward and it seems policy makers are nearing an impasse, with a growing number becoming increasingly uncomfortable with raising interest rates.
"The problem with raising interest rates on the expectation that inflation will rise towards target due to an apparent tightness in the labour market, is that when the results take longer to materialise than first thought, policy makers will naturally doubt the models being used and whether more damage than good is being done."
Retail sales volumes on the other hand jumped 1.6% month-on-month in September to reach $483.9bn, according to the Department of Commerce, bang in line with forecasts.
Of interest, in remarks to Bloomberg TV, Boston Fed chief Eric Rosengren said that whomever took over at the helm of the US central bank, he or she would have to work with the rest of the Committee. So while change in the Federal Reserve's handling of monetary policy might happen, it would probably evolve relatively slowly.
In other Fedspeak, Dallas Fed boss Robert Kaplan reportedly said that inflationary pressures were building but were being offset.
Still on the economic calendar for later in the session, US central bank governor Jerome Powell was set to deliver a speech at 1800 BST.
On the corporate side of things, Bank of America posted weaker than expected top line growth for the third quarter due to a sharp fall in sales and trading revenues at its Global Markets arm. Yet shares in the lender advanced as the results showed that the remainder of the lender's business lines performed well.
Stock in Wells Fargo & Co. on the other hand slipped as its top line fell short of analysts' estimates, shrinking 2% to $21.9bn.