Thursday's early trade: main indexes climb as tech, industrial gain; energy drags

Wall Street's main indexes were trading higher on Thursday with gains in technology and industrial stocks more than offsetting losses in energy stocks. Oil prices fell more than 1 percent as worries of rising US production outweighed a weak dollar. The S&P 500 energy index was down nearly 2 percent.
At 11:33 am ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2 percent at 24,943.93 and the S&P 500 rose 0.21 percent to 2,704.22. The Nasdaq Composite gained 0.5 percent to 7,179.58, helped by gains for Apple and Cisco. Apple rose 1.6 percent after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made the iPhone maker its top investment.
Cisco gained 3.3 percent on upbeat results and forecast. Wall Street shrugged off fears of rising inflation and higher interest rates to open more than half a percent higher on Thursday, putting the markets on course for their fifth straight day of gains.
Data showed US producer prices rose 0.4 percent in January, but only matched economists' estimates and likely helped further ease fears of inflation uptick. "We're continuing to see a bounce back, a recovery from the recent pullback. Everyone sold in the anticipation of the world ending and when it does not end, all of a sudden people decide to move back in," said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer of Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Massachusetts.