US shares edged higher and European shares slipped yesterday as investors were on tenterhooks awaiting the outcome of a vote in Washington on healthcare reform, seen as pivotal for US President Donald Trump’s pro-growth agenda.

All three major US indexes gained modestly in morning US trading despite uncertainty that Mr Trump and the Republican leaders who crafted the healthcare Bill had enough support to pass it, meaning they now risk defeat in their first attempt at major legislation and a key campaign pledge.

The back-and-forth over the Bill has led to some of the choppiest trading Wall Street has seen since Mr Trump’s election in November. Investors had grown worried that a failure of the legislation would damage prospects for Mr Trump’s pro-growth agenda items – tax reform and stimulus.

Some of that concern appeared to be ebbing yesterday ahead of the scheduled vote in the House, with some analysts and investors seeing a failure of the Bill as a catalyst to bring forward action on tax reform in particular. Despite the gains, the Dow and S&P 500 were still on track to post their first monthly declines since October.

“If this goes on the back burner and they start addressing corporate tax rates or infrastructure, that would be a positive for the market because the administration is not going to look at this and say ‘Hey, this thing is going to take a while’,” said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice-president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

MSCI’s all-country world equity index was last up 1.43 points, or 0.32 per cent, at 448.91.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was last up 56.96 points, or 0.28 per cent, at 20,713.54. The S&P 500 was up 9.6 points, or 0.41 per cent, at 2,355.56.

The Nasdaq Composite was up 38.98 points, or 0.67 per cent, at 5,856.67.

Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 0.12 per cent at 1,485.23.

The US dollar index was little changed at 99.736, but that left it near a roughly seven-week low of 99.547 touched on Wednesday.

That allowed safe-haven gold prices to edge higher. Spot gold prices, which hit a more than three-week high on Thursday of $1,253.12 an ounce, were up 0.12 per cent at $1,246.33.

US Treasuries prices were steady with benchmark 10-year yields last at 2.411 per cent, roughly unchanged from late Thursday’s yield.

Oil prices were flat amid hopes that an Opec output cut was beginning to balance a long-oversupplied market.

Brent crude was last up one cent at $50.57 a barrel. US crude was up two cents at $47.72 per barrel.

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