Financials Lead Wall Street Stocks Higher on Hopes for Relaxed Regulations

New York (Feb 3)  The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded above the 20,000 level again on Friday as a pending pause of banking regulations gave the financial sector a boost.

The Dow rose 0.87% to trade at 20,058. The S&P 500 was up 0.69%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.38%.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday afternoon to put a pause on financial regulations, the first step in undoing the Dodd-Frank regulations put in place in 2010. In comments to a CEO panel earlier in the day, Trump said, "We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank." The financial regulations were put in place after the global financial crisis in 2008 and were designed to ensure big banks could weather a shock to the global economy.

The financials sector was the best performer on Friday. Dow components Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan (JPM) were sharply higher. Wells Fargo (WFC) , Bank of America (BAC) , and Citigroup (C) climbed, while the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) rose 1.8%.

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Concerns over U.S. diplomacy lingered on Friday. The Treasury Department leveled sanctions against companies and people tied to Iran's ballistic missile testing. Earlier, Trump tweeted that Iran was "playing with fire" and his administration would not be as kind to the nation as was former President Barack Obama.

Source: TheStreet