NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th February, 2020) Stocks on Wall Street ended at record highs, encouraged by China's return to work from the long holiday imposed by the government to contain the coronavirus crisis.
A strong performance by shares in the technology sector also fired Monday's rally.
US stocks' top barometer, the Standard & Poors 500 index, closed up 0.7 percent at a record high of 3,353. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite index gained 1.1 percent to also close at an all-time high, at 9,629.
Wall Street's broadest index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, settled at 29,277, rising 0.6 percent.
China officially returned to work on Monday after the extended Lunar New Year holidays, with President Xi Jinping saying large-scale layoffs must be avoided to limit economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis. Still, many private businesses remained shut or extended work-from-home arrangements to staff as precaution against a pandemic that has already killed more than 900 Chinese and infected over 41,000.
