US stocks clung onto early gains at midsession on Tuesday as oil price advances and signs of stability returning to the battered Chinese economy buoy markets
But it was mainly a workers' strike that nearly halved output from Kuwait which buoyed oil prices and as such a temporary boost.
Although no fresh news out of China, analysts have remarked that recent growth trends in the second-largest economy point to stability returning.
The broad-based S&P500 index was up 0.04% at 2,095 - having spent the past hour dipping below Monday's close, while small cap stocks were led by energy stocks.
The S&P Midcap 400 was up 0.08% at 1,472 and led by gains from Noble Corp (NYSE:NE), Ensco (NYSE:ESV) and Denbury Resources (NYSE:DNR), each clocking in around 10% gains.
The S&P Smallcap 600 was unchanged at 697 but the gainers included Bonanza Creek Energy (NYSE:BCEI) at the top of the league with a 13% rise to $2.41.
Oil prices were firmly above $40. At the last count, 2.8% higher at $40.91.
Open
Stocks opened higher on Tuesday after a good day yesterday, as a recovery in the oil price and a slew of better-than-expected earnings reports helped to boost the major indices.
Brent rallied 3.1% to US$44.30 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediary futures climbed 3.2% to US$41.10 as the market shrugged off the Doha disappointments from the weekend.
The blue-chip index, the S&P 500, was up eight points at 2,102 after an hour of trading, while the Dow Jones climbed 70 points to 18,073.
Dow constituents Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) produced strong quarterly earnings reports, offsetting weaker reports from Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) and International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM).
In the small cap world, the Russell 2,000, was around seven points higher at 1,146.
Of the movers, XG Technolgy Inc (NASDAQ:XGTI) was a big gainer after it received an order to supply its xMax software-defined cognitive radio (SDCR) networking equipment to the U.S. Army's Intelligence Electronic Warfare Test Directorate (IEWTD). Shares climbed 12.5% to US$0.09.
Elsewhere, Transgenomic Inc (NASDAQ:TBIO) leapt almost 17.5% to US$0.69 as it unveiled its new breast cancer analysis panel this week.
It wasn’t all good news however, as Rennova Health Inc (NASDAQ) dropped 7.8% to US$0.5 as it saw revenues more than halve to US$37.9mln in 2015 compared to the year before as it continued to be hit by “challenges faced by all rehab laboratories”.