Stocks are seeing modest strength in early trading on Friday, extending the rally seen late in the previous session. The Dow is moving higher for the sixth consecutive session, climbing to its best intraday level in well over a month.
Currently, the major averages are posting modest gains on the day. The Dow is up 38.22 points or 0.2 percent at 17,088.97, the Nasdaq is up 21.02 points or 0.4 percent at 4,831.81 and the S&P 500 is up 3.81 points or 0.2 percent at 2,017.24.
The early strength on Wall Street comes as traders continue to react positively to yesterday's release of the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.
The minutes showed that Fed members were concerned about global growth risks and decided it was prudent to wait for additional information before raising interest rates.
Combined with recent jobs and trade data, the minutes helped reinforce the view that the Fed will not raise rates later this month and may delay its first rate hike into next year.
Paul Ashworth, Chief U.S. Economist at Capital Economics, said, "Admittedly, there are still two employment reports scheduled for release before the FOMC meets in December."
"But at this stage we think it would take a major turnaround in payroll growth, to well above 200,000 per month, to persuade officials to support a December rate hike," he added.
Overall buying interest has remained somewhat subdued, however, as traders look ahead to next week's release of earnings news from a number of big name companies.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Intel (INTC), JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), General Electric (GE), Citigroup (C), and Netflix (NFLX) are among the companies due to report their results.
Aluminum giant Alcoa (AA) unofficially kicked off the earning season after the close of trading on Thursday, reporting third quarter results that came in below analyst estimates.
Nonetheless, gold stocks have shown a substantial move to the upside on the day, driving the NYSE Arca Gold Bugs Index up by 3.9 percent. The strength in the sector comes as gold for December delivery is climbing $10.40 to $1,154.70 an ounce.
Airline, steel, and biotechnology stocks are also seeing early strength, while some weakness is visible among computer hardware stocks.
In overseas trading, stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region moved notably higher during trading on Friday. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index surged up by 1.6 percent, while China's Shanghai Composite Index jumped by 1.3 percent.
The major European markets are also seeing strength on the day. While the German DAX Index is up by 0.9 percent, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index and the French CAC 40 Index are both up by 0.5 percent.
In the bond market, treasuries have moved slightly higher following the pullback seen late in the previous session. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, is down by 1.1 basis points at 2.097 percent.
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