Investing.com – Wall Street was higher on Thursday after upbeat earnings, while hopes that a new deal between the U.K. and European Union on Brexit would take hold also supported sentiment.
The Dow gained 61 points or 0.2% by 9:44 AM ET (13:44 GMT), while the S&P 500 was up 14 points or 0.5% and the Nasdaq composite gained 46 points or 0.6%.
The deal, announced via Twitter by European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and enlarged upon at a briefing by the EU's top negotiator Michel Barnier, suggests that the most controversial elements of the negotiations - including future trade relations between the two sides and the future of Northern Ireland, have been postponed to a later date
However, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party said it remains opposed to the proposed agreement, making it unlikely that the deal will be passed by the U.K. Parliament when it votes on Saturday.
"Although the agreement reached between the U.K. and EU needs to be approved by the British parliament, the headline news coupled with U.S. earnings should boost market sentiment," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in a client note.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) jumped 5.9% after it added 6.8 million new customers last quarter, a strong improvement from earlier in the year. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) rose 2.7% on upbeat earnings, while Honeywell (NYSE:HON) gained 2% after it narrowed its guidance for the year.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) was up 1% on news that it received manufacturing approval from Chinese regulators.
Elsewhere, IBM (NYSE:IBM) tumbled 5.6%, as the company's years-long trend of falling sales reasserted itself despite the acquisition of Red Hat.
In commodities, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.3% to 97.403 and gold futures gained 0.2% to $1,496.75 a troy ounce. Crude oil futures declined 1% to $52.80 a barrel.
-Reuters contributed to this report