US stock market opens higher

By Ovunc Kutlu

NEW YORK (AA) - The stock market opened with gains on Wednesday with a rise in crude oil prices.

The Dow added 106 points to begin trading at 21,515 points and the S&P 500 rose 13 points to 2,439.

Nasdaq gained 486 points to start the day at 6,241 points.

At the first bell, American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up 2.3 percent to trade at $46.11 a barrel. International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $48.44 per barrel -- a 1.8 percent increase.

The market and investors are now focused on the weekly change in the U.S. crude oil inventories and production data that will be announced by the Energy Information Administration later on Wednesday.