Wall Street ended higher on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 posting its biggest one-day percentage gain in two months, as investors were buoyed by news that a framework for an agreement on Greenland had been reached and the possibility of new U.S. tariffs on European allies had been averted.

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite also enjoyed milestone days, gaining the most in percentage terms since January 5 and December 19, respectively.

The advances stood in stark contrast to the previous day’s selloff, which had been the worst daily performance by all three benchmarks since October 10, and reflected U.S. President Donald Trump’s use of tariff threats to press his agenda before pivoting once the policy victory could be declared.

“We have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st.”

Wall Street benchmarks had been trading in positive territory at the time of the announcement, but soared in its wake as investors cheered the aversion of a potential new tariff war over the future of Greenland.

“I don’t think who owns Greenland has any immediate impact on anything, in terms of economics,” said Jason Pride, chief of investment strategy & research at Glenmede.

“What is the economic impact is whether we all start imposing tariffs on each other,” he added.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 588.64 points, or 1.21%, to 49,077.23, the S&P 500 gained 78.76 points, or 1.16%, to 6,875.62, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 270.50 points, or 1.18%, to 23,224.83.

Before the mid-afternoon Greenland announcement, Wall Street had been broadly positive, as investors responded to Tuesday’s bruising selloff. However, while initial momentum had propelled benchmarks more than 1% higher, this energy had been ebbing by early afternoon.

While light on details, Trump’s announcement allowed markets to focus on underlying strengths within the U.S. economy, including strong earnings from banks.

The latest wave of results from lenders, including some of the largest superregional names, helped send the regional banking index soaring 4.7% to its highest close since November 2024.

Citizens Financial Group surged 7.1% to a record closing high, on the back of a 31.7% jump in quarterly profit. Truist Financial Corp climbed 1.8% after recording higher interest income and fees from investment banking.

All the S&P 500 subsectors rose, led by energy. It was buoyed by Halliburton, which gained 4.1% after earnings beat estimates, while EQT Corp and Expand Energy advanced 6.5% and 4.5% respectively, as natural gas prices hit a six-week high on cold weather.

United Airlines rose 2.2% after the carrier issued an upbeat outlook for the current quarter and the full year. Other airlines benefited from the positive sentiment, with Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, and Southwest all gaining between 1.1% and 2.4%.

Meanwhile, Netflix dropped 2.2% after reporting a muted outlook in its latest earnings. The streaming giant’s stock was also weighed by a pause in share buybacks to help fund the purchase of Warner Bros Discovery’s studio and streaming businesses.

Kraft Heinz fell 5.7% after a regulatory filing showed Berkshire Hathaway may shed its 27.5% stake in the consumer company.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru and David French in New York; Additional reporting by Johann M Cherian; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Shilpi Majumdar)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working to get more medications permitted to be sold over the counter, aiming to cut red tape, drop prices, and keep Americans unnecessarily out of the E.R.

Commissioner Marty Makary, speaking with The Daily Wire via Zoom on Wednesday, said the initiative is a “common sense reform that is long overdue,” addressing an archaic system that is simply not working. 

Most medications meet basic safety criteria, Makary said, “so then why do we have this archaic system whereby a physician has to prescribe it to you?”

Doctors can still prescribe over-the-counter medications, he noted, but history shows the prescription-only system has failed in key areas, including the opioid epidemic. 

“It failed us with the over-prescribing of antibiotics, too — most antibiotics are unnecessary,” he said. “So, the system is not working as designed.”

“And now that we have a very educated public, a public that’s getting empowered with health information like we’ve never seen before; this is an opportunity for us to do some common sense reforms.”

Makary said getting more medications approved for over-the-counter status will lower prices for Americans.

“There’s something magical when a drug is on the shelf of a store and you see the price,” he explained. “You have price transparency. Prices are kept in check. And for the subset of Americans that shop by price, they keep prices in check for everybody else.”

This also cuts out the middleman, or pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

“The pharmacy benefit managers are notorious for playing a money shell game behind the pharmacy counter, and you only get rung up for what’s called the copay,” Makary explained. “But your employer or your health plan may be charged an exorbitant amount of money for a basic medication.”

“Many of the modern-day medications that can be over the counter are actually less than the copay charged when you get them behind the counter,” he added. 

Balancing safety, Makary said the drugs that will be approved for over-the-counter status will need to meet certain criteria.

“The FDA is going to create criteria and already has some basic criteria, but we’re gonna formalize that so that companies can understand what we are thinking when we talk about drugs that should be non-prescription, and they are common-sense things,” he said. “Drugs that are safe, no abuse potential, cannot be used in some nefarious way, and don’t require ongoing laboratory testing.”

The commissioner said some of the obvious drugs that could fit these criteria are naloxone, commonly referred to as Narcan, and anti-nausea drugs.

“If you think about it, it can also save lives,” he explained. “Why is Naloxone, which is used for an opioid overdose, a prescription-only medication in some of its forms? We can unleash the free market, get more price transparency, and reduce a lot of the hassles of healthcare for many Americans.”

“The frustrations of sitting in an emergency room just to get some anti-nausea medication — getting put in a funny looking gown and having to wait on a stretcher for hours and hours on end,” Makary said. “I mean, these are expensive healthcare utilization touchpoints.”

“What are we worried about somebody taking an anti-nausea medication that they actually didn’t really need?” he added. “We’ve gotta use common sense.”

The initiative could impact emergency room wait times, which — as previously reported by The Daily Wire — have been exploding since the implementation of Obamacare.

“It just doesn’t make sense that you go to the emergency room just to get a refill on a prescription, or you sit in an urgent care facility for hours sometimes because you need a medication that you know you need that’s worked before,” Makary said. “That should be over the counter.”

Related: Why ER Wait Times Are So Out Of Control — And How To Fix Them