US STOCKS-Wall Street inches higher as Dec. 15 tariff deadline looms

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* Nike rises on Goldman Sachs upgrade
* Kroger drops following earnings miss
* Sage sinks as depression drug fails trial
* Indexes up: Dow up 0.1%, S&P 500 up 0.15%, Nasdaq 0.05%

(Updates to market close)
By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Wall Street eked out slight
gains on Thursday as investors waited for concrete news on a
hoped-for interim trade deal between the United States and China
before a new round of tariffs scheduled to kick in on Dec. 15.
Tech stocks led all three major U.S. stock averages
marginally into the black following upbeat statements from
President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
that the U.S.-China trade negotiations are "on track" and "going
well." Markets have been whipsawed in recent days by conflicting
reports on whether the world's two largest economies would be
able to arrive at a "phase one" agreement prior to Dec. 15, when
a new round of tariffs on Chinese imports is expected to take
effect. "Investors are trying to calibrate things," said Matthew
Keator, managing partner in the Keator Group, a wealth
management firm in Lenox, Massachusetts. "The markets are going
to toggle up and down until we see what happens on Dec. 15th to
get some sort of clarity in terms of how to move forward in the
near term."
Market participants appeared to shrug off the drama
unfolding in Washington as the U.S. House of Representatives
prepared to draft articles of impeachment against President
Donald Trump. "The market has become desensitized a bit to the
partisanship that's been going on," said Keator, while adding
that "uncertainty is not something the market enjoys."
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 28.01 points,
or 0.1%, to 27,677.79, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.67 points, or
0.15%, to 3,117.43 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 4.03
points, or 0.05%, to 8,570.70.
Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, eight closed higher.
Materials stocks .SPLRCM were the biggest winners, while
energy .SPNY suffered the largest percentage drop.
Nike Inc NKE.N gained 2.2% following Goldman Sachs'
upgrade of the sportswear maker's stock to "buy" from "neutral."
Kroger Co KR.N shares fell 3.0% after the supermarket
chain missed Wall Street earnings estimates, hurt by stiff
competition from Walmart Inc WMT.N and Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O . Online craft retailer Etsy ETSY.O dipped 2.5% on a
downgrade to "underweight" by Morgan Stanley. SecureWorks Corp SCWX.O jumped 29.4%, its best day ever,
after the cyber security firm posted a surprise third-quarter
profit. Sage Therapeutics Inc SAGE.O tumbled 59.7% after its
depression drug failed in a late-stage study. Economic data showed a shrinking trade deficit, a drop in
jobless claims and a rebound in factory orders, suggesting a
still-robust, if slowing, U.S. economy. Investors now look to Friday's employment report from the
U.S. Labor Department, which is expected to show nonfarm
payrolls increased by 180,000 in November.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
1.15-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.00-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 14 new 52-week highs and 3 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 54 new highs and 64 new lows.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.42 billion shares, compared
with the 6.71 billion average over the last 20 trading days.