© Reuters. Wall Street sign in Manhattan. October 26, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
(Reuters) – The and the Nasdaq gained ground on awaiting updates on a new round of talks to raise the US debt ceiling, as Micron shares fell on China’s ban on memory chips.
President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet today after discussions all but stopped last Friday. The new talks come less than two weeks before the deadline, after which the Treasury has warned that the federal government will struggle to pay its debts.
In a move that was perceived as heightening trade tensions between Beijing and Washington, China banned chipmaker MICRON TECHNOLOGY from selling memory chips to key domestic industries, sending its shares tumbling 4.27%.
The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index is down 0.4%.
APPLE (NASDAQ:) fell 0.56% on news that Loop Capital downgraded the iPhone maker’s stock from a “buy” to a “hold”. According to Refinitiv data, this is the first rating cut in five months.
At around 4.40pm, the Average was down 0.29% to 33,328.30, the S&P 500 was up 0.08% to 4,195.42, and the S&P 500 was up 0.43%, to 12,711.47.
PACWEST BANCORP jumped 9.77% after the regional lender entered into an agreement to sell a portfolio of 74 home construction loans to a Kennedy-Wilson subsidiary.
(Translated by Chiara Bontacchio, editing Stefano Bernabei)