NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks mostly rose early Wednesday, shrugging off the prior session's weakness, ahead of another round of congressional testimony from US economic policymakers.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told a House panel Tuesday that inflation could tick higher, but that price increases would likely be temporary.

Powell was due back at a Senate hearing Wednesday, along with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has consistently argued for aggressive fiscal spending to boost the coronavirus-ravaged US economy.

About 35 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.9 percent at 32,716.21.

The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.5 percent to 3,929.55, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.1 percent to 13,212.68.

Major indices fell about one percent Tuesday on fears of a resurgence in Covid-19 infections.

US durable goods orders fell 1.1 percent last month, government data said on Wednesday, the first month-on-month slump since the worst of the pandemic's business disruptions in April 2020.

Among individual companies, Intel rose 1.4 percent after announcing it will invest $20 billion in building two new plants in Arizona as part of a plan to ramp up production in the United States and Europe.