Stocks rallied Thursday after President Donald Trump made "small concessions" to China by delaying tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods until the last half of October.
Trump's "gesture of goodwill" follows an earlier move by Beijing to exempt 16 types of American products from additional tariffs.
Markets also got a boost after the European Central Bank cut its deposit rate and relaunched a bond-buying program.
Three experts break down what comes next.
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money," said Trump is pushing for the Federal Reserve to mirror the ECB's latest actions.
"I think the Europeans should be careful. The president is no fan of [Angela] Merkel, the president is no fan of the way that the Europeans have handled their auto tariffs and they could be next. If they continue to make it so the euro is being debased, they ought to be very careful. I think the president is itching for something against them ... I don't think he'll call [ECB President Mario] Draghi a bonehead because he wants our Fed chief to do exactly what Draghi is doing and just stay in step. The problem is they have no growth whatsoever so they gotta do something. We have some growth."
Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Group, said the bond market is in a prime position to spur more gains in the U.S. stock market.
"There are some other good things going on here. I think not only the good trade news, but the fact that bond yields have shown a propensity to rise again shows a big vote of confidence coming from the bond market, which is healthy for stocks too. Even this morning there is still a really close relationship between the direction of that 10-year yield and the direction of the stock market. Also, economic surprise indices around the globe have picked up. They certainly have here in the United States but they also have [picked up] in the emerging world, in China and Europe so that kind of fresh upside economic momentum is starting to cause recession fears to fade a bit, so I think it's more than just about the trade news. ... We might be starting on a little change of character not only in bond yields but also in leadership in the stock market."
Sameer Samana, global equity and technical strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said the market is not as bearish as investors expected, but it's still worth being prudent.
"At least on an expectation basis, it's clear now to say that people probably got a little too 'beared up.' We were there in the fourth quarter of last year too and the way expectations work is eventually reality starts to outperform. The tricky part is unfortunately you do still have a lot of headwinds; a lot of the PMIs [purchasing managers' indexes] and a lot of the business confidence is still very low, small-business confidence … ticked down, consumer confidence has started to roll over just a little bit, so we would probably be more in the cautious camp. There are some good things going on, but the market is also 200 points off its lows and you've got yields about 30 or so basis points higher, which has kind of been the April and July moves. It's right in line with that. We would say at this point it's probably a good time to rein in some of that stock exposure and maybe at least look at some of those longer duration fixed income instruments."
