Wall St opens higher on banks, growth stocks boost; Dow up 1%

Wall Street's main indexes opened higher on Monday, helped by a bounce back in growth and bank stocks, after the benchmark S&P 500 hovered near a grim market milestone at the end of last week.

US President Joe Biden today signalled he'd reconsider China tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

Appearing in Tokyo for the launch of a new Asia-Pacific trade initiative, the US President said he was considering remove some of the punitive import duties enacted by former president Donald Trump on China.

Analysts also pointed to positive market sentiment after stocks rallied on Friday after the S&P 500 briefly dipped into a "bear market" -- defined as a drop of more than 20 percent from a market peak.

About 25 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.1 percent at 31,619.50.

The broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.9 percent to 3,937.92, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.7 percent to 11,429.00.

Among individual companies, VMware jumped 18.4 percent following reports it is in talks to be acquired by Broadcom. Broadcom fell 4.7 percent.

“The markets have been due for a rally for quite some time,” wrote Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Investment Management. “It is not likely to mean the end of the decline that began at the start of the year, but a respite from the persistent selling of the past two months.”

Equities have been volatile as investors assess the impact of China’s Covid policies and monetary tightening on the outlook for the world’s largest economies. Beijing reported a record number of cases, reviving concerns about a lockdown, and adopted multiple measures to further stabilize the economy.