Wall Street sees gains at midday

Wall Street saw gains by midday on Thursday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq composite, and the S&P 500 were all up by 0.8 percent. The Dow stood at 11,056.97, while the Nasdaq was at 2,129.55 and the S&P had reached 1,255.34. The gains came ahead of any announcement concerning interest rates from the US Federal Reserve.

Miners were up as the prices of gold and copper went higher. Newmont Minng added 2.1 percent to $50.28, while Barrick Gold was up 2.7 percent to $28.55 and Freeport McMoran advanced by 3.4 percent to $51.86.

Oil stocks were higher as well as the price of crude oil topped $73 per barrel. Sunoco was up 3 percent to $67.23, while Valero added 3.1 percent to $65.37, a six-week high. Duke Energy gained 3.6 percent to $29.39 after it said it will spin off its natural gas business. The announcement spurred an upgrade from “equal weight” to “overweight” from Lehman Brothers.

Technology stocks were mixed. In the semiconductor sector, Micron Technology dropped 6.7 percent to $14.89 after it issued a third quarter report that was disappointing even though it showed a profit during the period this year after having sustained losses during the same time last year. Software maker Red Hat was down 8.9 percent to $22.78 on an earnings report that was below expectations due to acquisitions and accounting charges.

On the other hand, Microsoft and Yahoo were both up at mid-session. Microsoft added 1.2 percent to $23.43, while Yahoo had gained 1.7 percent to $32.45.

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