Wall Street rallied at the open on Friday as upbeat earnings and political news helped buoy investor sentiment at the end of the week. Markets were also cheered by a Wall Street Journal report that the Federal Reserve could cease shrinking its bond portfolio sooner than expected. Ten minutes into the day's trading, the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.8 percent at 24,736.24.

The broader S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq were both up 0.7 percent at 2,659.45 and 7,119.30 respectively.

The levels put the Dow on track to post gains for a fifth week in a row but still left the S&P and the Nasdaq in the red for the week.

Dow member Intel sank 7.5 percent after disappointing earnings and analyst downgrades but Starbucks gained 2.9 percent after better than expected fourth-quarter earnings and improved guidance for 2019.

Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com said markets' optimism might be based on wishful thinking.

He noted, "there is chatter around the edges of some important matters that is helping the market climb a wall of worry on the pretense that some of its worries may soon be less worrisome."

News reports indicated lawmakers in the United States and Britain were working to end the partial shutdown of the US government, now more than a month old, and to break the Brexit impasse.

Official figures on durable goods orders and new home sales were not published due to the partial government shutdown.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019