US market opens higher with vaccine hope, metals gain

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - Major indexes in the US stock market opened higher on Friday as COVID-19 vaccine hope continues to provide optimism for investors.

The Dow Jones was up points, or 197 points, or 0.7%, to 29,277 at opening bell, while the S&P 500 rose 23 points, pr 0.6%, to 3,560 points.

The Nasdaq gained 65 points, or 0.5%, to 11,774 points as tech companies, such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, look likely to see their share prices continue to recover from previous days' losses.

Precious metals have also ended their four-day losing streak and started recovering as investors' favorite safe haven gold gained 0.8% to $1,892 per ounce and silver soared 1.9% to $24.7 per ounce.

Oil prices, on the other hand, pulled back from their four-day rally as Brent crude was around $43.08 per barrel at 09.50 a.m. EDT (1450 GMT) and the US' West Texas Intermediate was at $40.52 a barrel as both benchmarks were down more than 1%.

DoorDash, a major food delivery app in US among Uber Eats and GrubHub, filed for its initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier Friday.

With quarantine measures earlier this year, the company posted $1.9 billion revenue in three quarters of 2020, up significantly from some $580 million the same period last year.

The SEC announced Friday it has charged major US bank Wells Fargo's former CEO John Stumpf and Community Bank Chief Carrie Tolstedt for misleading investors.

The US market watchdog said the executives misled investors amid widespread issues of sales practices that dated back to 2011.

While Stumpf agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the charges, the SEC said it will have fraud charges against Tolstedt in court of law.

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees in 2016 after personnel opened millions of accounts and applied for 500,000 unauthorized credit card accounts to boost sales figures and meet sales targets.