NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are staging a morning rally on Wall Street. All three major indexes quickly added one percent in the opening minutes of trading. Investors appear focused on some strong corporate earnings reports, including General Electric and Morgan Stanley out this morning. Oil prices also are rising today, with benchmark U.S. crude trading above $83 a barrel.
NEW YORK (AP) — General Electric says its third quarter profit rose 11 percent. The company’s aviation division, which sells and services aircraft engines and accounts for the biggest share of company profits, performed well as did company’s oil and gas division, which makes and services drilling equipment. GE’s operating earnings rose to 38 cents per share, beating Wall Street expectations.
NEW YORK (AP) — Morgan Stanley’s third-quarter net income nearly doubled. The investment bank earned more than $1.7 billion. After adjustments, per-share earnings were 65 cents, easily topping Wall Street expectations. Morgan Stanley had a large increase in pre-tax income for its institutional securities business, which includes the firm’s prime brokerage, trading and investment banking divisions. It also had a large increase in its equity underwriting business, which has been helped by initial public offerings, including that of Alibaba, the largest IPO ever.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The pace of U.S. homebuilding picked up last month. The Commerce Department says housing starts rose 6.3 percent as construction firms broke ground on more apartment complexes. A sluggish economic recovery and meager wage growth has left more Americans renting, instead of owning homes, and apartment construction has surged 30 percent over the past 12 months. That compares with an 11 percent gain for single-family houses.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen says the past few decades have been an era of “significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority.” In a speech to a Boston conference on economic opportunity, Yellen says the sustained rise in income inequality is a concern. She suggests early childhood education, affordable higher education, business ownership and inheritances can serve as “building blocks” to boost wealth.
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