US stock market opens higher

By Ovunc Kutlu

NEW YORK (AA) - The U.S. stock market opened higher Wednesday with a rise in crude oil prices.

The Dow added 2 points to start the day at 21,577 points, and the S&P 500 rose 4 points to 2,464.

The Nasdaq climbed 23 points to begin trading at 6,368 points.

At the first bell, American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was up 0.5 percent to trade at $46.59 a barrel. International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $49.10 a barrel -- a rise of 0.6 percent.

Market and investors are looking now for the weekly change in U.S. crude oil inventories and production data that will be released later Wednesday.