US stocks gain following mostly solid earnings

• Wall Street stocks rose early Tuesday, bolstered by a round of mostly solid corporate earnings amid lingering uncertainty over international trade.
• About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 26,927.78, up 0.5 percent.
• On Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said there is "no difference" between how the two sides see the situation.

NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks rose early Tuesday, bolstered by a round of mostly solid corporate earnings amid lingering uncertainty over international trade.

Shares of Dow components JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth Group all jumped after earnings reports, while Goldman Sachs fell sharply.

"There is good and bad in the earnings reports (as there always is)" but the move in the stock market "also goes to show that market participants aren't overly concerned about what they have heard in aggregate on the earnings front," analyst Patrick O'Hare wrote at Briefing.com.

About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 26,927.78, up 0.5 percent.

The broad-based S&P 500 also won 0.5 percent to 2,980.70, along with the Nasdaq Composite Index, which stood at 8,091.58.

Tuesday's earnings results mark the unofficial start of the third-quarter reporting period, which will continue over the next three weeks.

Since Friday, when the US-China partial trade agreement bolstered stocks, investors have been cautious about the agreement, due in part to reticence in China on an agreement that US President Donald Trump has described as "substantial."

On Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said there is "no difference" between how the two sides see the situation.

But lingering trade uncertainty was a driving factor in a subdued outlook from the International Monetary Fund that lowered that 2019 and 2020 growth forecasts and warned of a "precarious" outcome if trade conflicts continue to fester.