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Wall Street makes steady start to the week

Published: 01:23 07 Oct 2014 AEDT

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Monday morning marked a steady start to the week on Wall Street as the Big Apple’s main indices moved into positive territory.

Sentiment is improved in the market thanks to Friday’s positive job stats but a wave of fresh indicators – in the form of earning’s season – means investors will have little time to sit on their hands.

Aluminium producer Alcoa kicks off Q3 reporting on Wednesday.

“Barring some significant flare up in Hong Kong, the attention of US markets is likely to move away from international events and turn inwards to the performance of US corporations throughout the third quarter,” said Jasper Lawler, CMC Markets analyst.

“Third quarter reporting carries extra weight because of the extreme results of the first and second quarters which swung from very poor to very good; really this quarter will be the first one in which investors can judge the true pace of corporate earnings growth in the US.”

Today, however, investors have been kept engaged by mergers and acquisition news, including a US$12.2bn deal between healthcare technology firms Becton Dickinson and CareFusion.

Elsewhere computer firm HP revealed plans to split in two, creating a hardware company and a separate services business.

The Dow Jones moved 44 points to the good, up 0.26%, changing hands at 17,054 whilst the S&P 500 and NASDAQ gained 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.

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