Wall Street inches higher amid ‘no news’ on China trade spat

In a topsy-turvy market, no news is good news.

Wall Street climbed Wednesday as traders tiptoed back into stocks — with market strategists citing a lack of negative headlines about the US-China trade spat.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average popped 258.20 points — closing up 1% at 26,036.10 while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively.

Traders have been skittish as tensions between the US and China intensified in recent weeks. On Friday markets sold off sharply after President Trump tweeted that US companies were “hereby ordered” to seek alternatives to doing business in China.

But in recent days, tensions appeared to cool, with Trump saying earlier this week that the two countries were “getting back to the table” on trade.

“The market has been led around by trade and tariff headlines like it’s on a leash,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director at Baird.

“When [negative] headlines are absent we get let off that leash and find ourselves wandering over to the notion that the consumer, and by proxy the overall economy, is still doing fine,” Antonelli said.

“The market wants negotiations to continue and it doesn’t want to see a deterioration,” Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told The Post.

On the consumer side, stocks were helped Wednesday Tiffany’s reporting better-than-expected profits amid the trade war and continued unrest in Hong Kong. The jeweler’s shares climbed 3% Thursday, despite warning of headwinds.

“The more you can see the high-end consumer spending is a positive for the market,” Krosby said.

Also buoying markets was a rebound in energy and financial stocks, which have both been hampered by worries of a slowdown in global growth.

“When a headline-driven market bounces, the sectors hit the hardest will tend to outperform,” Antonelli said.