US stocks gain as market awaits G20 talks

NEW YORK: After two down days, Wall Street stocks climbed early Wednesday ahead of a crucial US-China trade encounter at this week's Group of 20 summit in Japan.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was looking forward to the G20 talks, but alluded to the halting state of the negotiations in the months-long dispute.

"I think there's a path to complete this but we'll see what we get," he told CNBC.

About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 26,582.29, up 0.1 percent.

The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.2 percent at 2,923.09, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.8 percent to 7,945.37.

Sales of US durable goods fell 1.3 percent to $243.4 billion in May, US data showed, with the crisis involving the Boeing 737 MAX weighing on the figures.

Among industrial sectors, chip companies were especially strong in the early going of the session following a healthy earnings report from Micron Technology, which surged 11.4 percent after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter earnings.

Other chip companies with big gains included Dow member Intel and Lam Research.

But General Mills plunged 8.4 percent after fourth-quarter sales missed analyst expectations, due in part to lower sales in North America and some other regions.

A bright spot was the company's addition of Blue Buffalo pet food, which was acquired in April 2018 and led to higher overall sales when currency fluctuations were removed.