US STOCKS-Tech stocks lift Wall St as reports brighten hopes of trade deal

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* Beijing open to agreeing to partial trade deal - BBG
* China offering extra U.S. agriculture purchases - FT
* Apple, Microsoft biggest boost to S&P 500
* J&J drops after jury says company must pay $8 bln in
damages
* Indexes up: Dow 0.63%, S&P 500 0.81%, Nasdaq 0.98%

(Updates to early afternoon, adds comments)
By Arjun Panchadar
Oct 9 (Reuters) - Wall Street rose for the first time in
three sessions on Wednesday with technology stocks providing a
boost, as a report that China was open to a partial trade deal
soothed investor nerves ahead of high-level talks on Thursday.
Shares in Microsoft Corp MSFT.O and Apple Inc AAPL.O
rose more than 1% and were among the biggest boosts to the S&P
500 .SPX . The technology sector .SPLRCT rose 1.4%.
Chipmakers with a sizable exposure to China also gained,
with the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index .SOX up about 2%.
China was still open to agreeing to a partial trade deal
with the United States, despite the inclusion of top Chinese
artificial intelligence startups in a trade blacklist, according
to a Bloomberg report. Separately, the Financial Times said Beijing was offering to
increase its annual purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
"Investors are hoping for an interim deal, they aren't
expecting anything big, but are cautiously optimistic," said
Michael Geraghty, equity strategist at Cornerstone Capital
Group.
Trade tensions, efforts to impeach President Donald Trump
and signs of slowing economic growth have taken a toll on equity
markets in October, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes off
about 2% since the end of September.
Rising geopolitical risks have also not offered investors
any respite. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday
a military operation targeting Kurdish fighters in northeast
Syrian had begun. A sharp contraction in U.S. manufacturing data, as well as a
dismal reading on business activity last week has raised bets of
a third interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell flagged openness to further rate
cuts on Tuesday. At 2 p.m. ET, the central bank is due to
release minutes from its September meeting. The session's gains were broad-based, with all the major S&P
500 sectors trading higher and 29 of the 30 components of the
blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average index .DJI in positive
territory, with Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N the only decliner.
The drugmaker's shares dropped 2% after a jury awarded $8
billion in punitive damages to a man who accused it of failing
to warn that young men using its antipsychotic drug Risperdal
could grow breasts. Investors will now turn their eye to the third-quarter
earnings season, which begins next week with U.S. banks
reporting, to gauge the health of the domestic economy.
Analysts expect the worst quarterly profit performance since
2016, with earnings for S&P 500 companies estimated to fall 3.1%
from a year earlier, based on IBES data from Refinitiv.
"The corporate earnings growth has been stagnating and it
just shows that these tariffs have hit corporate profit growth,"
Geraghty said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was up 165.11
points, or 0.63%, at 26,329.15, the S&P 500 .SPX was up 23.37
points, or 0.81%, at 2,916.43 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
was up 76.71 points, or 0.98%, at 7,900.49.
The communication services sector .SPLRCL posted the
smallest gain among the 11 major sectors, weighed by Netflix Inc
NFLX.O , which was down 1.6% after two brokerages cut price
targets on the video streaming service provider's shares.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners for a 2.11-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and a 1.66-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded nine new 52-week highs and 10 new
lows, while the Nasdaq recorded five new highs and 86 new lows.