Wall Street reacts cautiously in first session after Trump assassination attempt

Wall Street opened in the green on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its main indicator, up 0.59% to 40,236 points, reacting cautiously to the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump.

Ten minutes after the opening of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the S&P 500 index was up 0.53% to 5,645 points, and the Nasdaq technology index was up 0.69% to 18,525 points.

Investors are looking at the impact on the market of the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday, when the Republican was hit by a bullet in the right ear while giving a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

One person was killed in the attack, two others were injured and the attacker, who fired from outside the premises, was shot dead by the police.

Moments before the stock market opened, Trump Media & Technology Group shares were up 61%, and in early trading they were up nearly 30%.

While the incident could fuel political violence in the country, it also has the potential to boost Donald Trump in the upcoming November elections, analysts say.

“The next few months will be crucial both for US policy and for the stability of global financial markets,” said Sergio Ávila, senior market analyst at IG, who highlighted the “sensitivity” of investors to political events.

Tom Essaye, in his Sevens Report, believes that the attack will have a “relatively limited” impact on the stock market, as the market had already assumed that Trump would win the next election.

“The ultimate direction of the market will continue to be determined by economic growth and whether or not there is a major economic slowdown,” he added.

On the corporate front, shares in U.S. insurers UnitedHealth and Humana rose 2% on the prospect that a new Trump presidency would ease cost pressures.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs also rose 2% after its quarterly results beat Wall Street expectations.

By sector, gains predominated this morning, led by the technology sector (0.88%) and the financial sector (0.87%), while the biggest losses were in the public services sector (-1.4%) and raw materials sector (-0.21%).

Among the 30 Dow stocks, the most notable gainers were JPMorgan Chase (2.24%) and Apple (2.12%), while Nike (-1.17%) and Cisco (-1.07%) fell.

In other markets, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil opened on Monday with a drop of 0.5%, to $81.80 a barrel, after the dollar gained ground following the attack on Trump and political uncertainty in the United States.

Meanwhile, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond rose to 4.211%.