US stocks trade higher day after rout; Trump says he won't seize Greenland using force

Wall Street stocks opened higher Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he wouldn't seize Greenland with force while insisting on "immediate negotiations" to make it a US territory.

Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos that he "won't use force" to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark that the US president has fixated on in recent days.

In the first minutes of trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4 percent at 48,697.73.


The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.3 percent to 6,819.92, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index edged up 0.2 percent to 22,988.96.

US stock futures had been in the red prior to Trump's statement on Greenland, extending the losses from Tuesday when Trump's threat of imposing tariffs on Europe over its stance on Greenland rattled markets.

"It is very difficult for investors to deal with so much uncertainty," said Ken Mahoney of Mahoney Asset Management.

"Very few investors came into the new year thinking the president had really seriously considered pursuing Greenland in its crosshairs and threatening tariffs against Europe who are opposing him on this action, which was a big fallout over the weekend."

Among individual companies, Netflix fell 5.2 percent as it projected that revenue would be essentially flat in the current quarter after years of growth.