Wall Street rises as investors look beyond impeachment talk

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday as investors looked past Democrats' attempt to impeach President Donald Trump, while Nike shares jumped on upbeat quarterly results.

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Democratic lawmakers late Tuesday moved to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump, and indexes weakened briefly early in the day after the White House released a summary of a telephone call between Trump and Ukraine's president that is at the centre of the impeachment inquiry.

The Ukrainian president said he was not pushed by Trump to investigate a political rival.

Helping sentiment, data showed that sales of new U.S. single-family homes rebounded more than expected in August, a sign that the struggling housing market was starting to get a lift from lower borrowing rates.

"Good economic data is fighting with political noise and good data is winning," said Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.

Adding to bullish sentiment, Trump said a trade deal with China could happen sooner than expected, comments that were in contrast to his harsh rhetoric on Tuesday on the dispute.

Nike Inc shares jumped 4.2% after the company's first-quarter results beat market expectations.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> rose 170.69 points, or 0.64%, to 26,978.46, the S&P 500 <.SPX> gained 18.76 points, or 0.63%, to 2,985.36 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 86.81 points, or 1.09%, to 8,080.44.

Also on the trade front, Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced initial details of an emerging trade deal between the two countries, with Trump saying it would open up Japanese markets to $7 billion worth of American products.

Shares in Philip Morris surged 6.1% after the tobacco company called off merger talks with Altria Group Inc and said it would instead focus on the U.S. launch of its tobacco-heating product, iQOS.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.42-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.60-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 9 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 25 new highs and 95 new lows.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Carew, Sruthi Shankar and Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Sriraj Kalluvila and Cynthia Osterman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.