Wall Street Opens Higher as China Trade Hopes Buoy Risk Appetite

At the opening bell, U.S. equities pushed higher: the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 292.10 points (0.62%) to 47,499.2, the S&P 500 added 60.95 (0.90%) to 6,852.64, the Nasdaq Composite advanced 331.24 (1.43%) to 23,586.1, and the Russell 2000 ticked up 1.59 (0.64%) to 251.02. In commodities, gold (Dec ’25) traded at $4,055.10, down $82.70 (-2.00%) as of 9:13 a.m. ET, while Brent crude was $65.21, up $0.01 (+0.02%).

Optimism stems from weekend talks in Malaysia that produced a "positive framework" ahead of Thursday’s summit between President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping, including a deferral of additional Chinese rare-earth export restrictions, fresh U.S. soybean purchases, and a finalized TikTok arrangement. The Trump administration may also lift certain fentanyl-linked tariffs if Beijing cooperates, even as 100% tariffs could hit Nov. 1 absent an extension and the current truce approaches a Nov. 10 expiry. The White House also launched a new Section 301 probe, a reminder that enforcement frictions persist.

The upbeat tenor drew support from Wedbush, which called the weekend developments “a very bullish sign for the markets and in particular tech stocks heading into the highly anticipated meeting/summit between President Trump and Xi this Thursday in South Korea.” Wedbush added the outcome “would be a gamechanger for the AI Revolution thesis if the US/China get to a more comprehensive trade deal which would take the ‘darker bear scenarios’ off the table.We now await more details and news this week from South Korea in a potentially watershed moment… with the tech sector front and center.”

Policy and earnings loom large. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve is due to issue its latest statement, with investors expecting a quarter-point cut. At the same time, five “Magnificent Seven” names report this week—an earnings cluster that will test the durability of AI-driven profit stories.

Adding to the catalyst mix, Nvidia's GTC Washington conference opens today in the nation’s capital, shifting the AI conversation from product cycles to national infrastructure. Chief Executive Jensen Huang is slated to speak Tuesday at 12 p.m. ET, where he is expected to press the case for AI factories, policy, and energy-intensive data centers that knit together training and inference at an industrial scale. “AI is the most transformative technology in human history — and the race is on,” he said in a teaser statement. Investors will parse any signals on hyperscaler capital spending and the expanding ecosystem spanning robotics, quantum, and industrial automation.

The risk, as ever, is that expectations have sprinted ahead of deliverables. Should Thursday’s summit yield only broad cliches, markets could hand back early gains, particularly with valuations sensitive to policy headlines and AI capital-expenditure trajectories. For now, momentum is with the bulls, but it’s a week where geopolitics, monetary policy, and megacap guidance will jointly set the close.