By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher after the long weekend, with risk appetite emboldened by a sharp drop in coronavirus cases and reassurances about enduring support from the Federal Reserve.
By 9:35 AM ET (1435 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 105 points, or 0.3% at 31,564 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.2% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 0.3%. All three indices hit record highs in the first minutes of trading.
The moves came after St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard played down suggestions that the Fed’s loose monetary policy was fueling an asset bubble, either in stocks or in assets such as Bitcoin, which topped $50,000 for the first time earlier in the day. Bullard dismissed the current action in stocks as “just normal investing."
Among individual movers, Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR) stood out with a 7.1% drop as investors trimmed exposure ahead of the scheduled end of the cyber-security firm’s post-IPO lockup on Friday. The group’s quarterly update released earlier failed to provide enough reassurances about the long-term outlook to support holders.