Wall Street closes solidly higher, marking weekly gains

US stock indices rallied on Friday on optimism about the US-China trade dispute while the markets focused on corporate results.

Wall Street was boosted recently as the trade war risks receded after US President Donald Trump signalled a potential lessening of tariffs on Chinese goods.

A Bloomberg report also indicated the Chinese government is considering tariff exemptions for some US products.

This week, quarterly results by Tesla, IBM, Alphabet, and Intel were released, and were mostly positive, but they all gave up weak forecasts for this year.

The Consumer Confidence index from the University of Michigan dropped 8.4% this month to 52.2 from March’s 57.

Dow Jones closed 0.1% higher at 40113 points, marking a weekly profit of 2%.

S&P 500 rose 0.7%, or 40 points to 5525 points, with a weekly profit of 4%.

NASDAQ surged 1.3% to 17,383 points, with a weekly gain of 6%.