Wall Street Opens Higher as Oracle, Peloton Restore Faith in Tech Growth

Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher on Friday, with bargain-hunting among tech stocks conspicuous after their renewed declines on Thursday. 

By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 153 points or 0.6% at 27,687 points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were both up 0.4%. 

The market was supported by strong earnings posted after the close on Thursday by both software giant Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) and Peloton Interactive (NASDAQ:PTON), the maker of high-end exercise bikes. The reports restored confidence in the narrative that had driven the rally in the Nasdaq through the summer, namely that the disruption from the pandemic will bring accelerated benefits to companies that facilitate remote working - or working out. 

Peloton stock and Oracle stock both rose 4.9%.

Earlier, participants had shrugged off figures showing stronger-than-expected inflation in the U.S. in August. The consumer price index rose 0.4% to be up 1.3% on the year. After adjusting for volatile food and energy prices, the core CPI rose 0.4% to 1.7%, its highest since April and apparently back on course toward the Federal Reserve's target of 2.0%. Given that the Fed has now said it will tolerate an overshoot of the 2% target to compensate for the time inflation has undershot, there is effectively no reason to fear it will tighten policy as a pre-emptive step.

Elsewhere, though, gains were relatively muted at the end of a week that has shown that prices can go down as well as up. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rose a modest 0.1%, while Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock rose 1.0% and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock rose 0.7%. The 'gigacap' stocks have been responsible for almost all of the market's gains through the summer, leaving them all ripe for a bout of consolidation.

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