US stock market opens higher with rising oil prices

The Nasdaq composite saw gains of 42 points (0.96%) to reach 4,478. Investors also have been betting on the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee to downplay the likelihood for additional rate hikes when minutes from its January meeting are released later today.

Freeport-McMoRan was up 6.7 percent at $5.9 after the copper miner agreed to sell a stake in one of its mine to Sumitomo Metal Mining 5713.T .

“I take it as extremely positive news that the U.S. market is rallying on a day that crude is down”, said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“The rally itself has been extraordinary but very thin and the failure of the yen to continue on the fairly steady path of weakening we’ve seen in the past couple of days has been reflected as nervousness in the Nikkei”, said Stefan Worrall, director of Japan equity sales at Credit Suisse.

“The market’s response to the agreement suggested they are underwhelmed”, said Felicity Emmett, co-head of Australian economics at ANZ.

“It is clear that when high-beta cyclicals and momentum shorts, such as energy and banks, are sharply outperforming markets, it is due to covering short positions”.

The dollar rose 1 percent against a basket of major currencies while the euro edged lower at $1.113, down from last week’s four-month high of $1.1377.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 1.6 percent to 16,453.83.

The broad-based S&P 500 rose 19.99 (1.05 per cent) to 1,915.57, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 51.93 (1.17 per cent) to 4,487.88.

There will be no shortage of market-moving data Wednesday.

Gold futures for April saw gains of 10 cents, trading at $1,208.40 an ounce. The number of housing permits pulled also slipped 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.202 million, trailing estimates for a 1.224 million annual pace. The increase supports earlier assertions by the Federal Reserve that inflation will slowly increase. Markets have been rattled the months-long slump in oil prices, which has hammered the share prices of energy companies and spilled over into worries about losses for banks.

In Asia, shares gained on Wednesday in morning trade, taking a lead from Wall Street where investors took some comfort from a decision by major oil producers to freeze production.

Garmin (NASDAQ:GRMN) up 14% at US$40.21 after the Global Positioning System device and wearable fitness product maker beat estimates posting fourth quarter earnings.

Shares of Fossil Group Inc.

In a sign that top investors are sensing the return in the value of oil, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) disclosed a new investment in pipeline operator Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI), boosting its bet on the oil industry as crude prices hover near 12-year lows.

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)(GOOGL) rose 2.5% after the Google parent announced Tuesday afternoon that its think tank, previously called Google Ideas, will become a technology incubator separate (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-think-tank-becomes-jigsaw-latest-independent-alphabet-company-2016-02-16) from the Google search company.