US equity markets advanced amid some signs of progress in negotiations for a new fiscal stimulus deal. - Dow settled +113-points or +0.40% higher at 28,308.79, off an earlier session pean of 28,575.03. Goldman Sachs Group Inc rose +1.2% after Bloomberg reported that the bank agreed to a more-than-US$2B settlement with the U.S. Justice Department for its role in Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal. The broader S&P500 rose +0.47%, with Energy (up +1.13%) leading ten of the eleven primary sectors higher. The Nasdaq added +0.32%. The Justice Department formally charged Alphabet Inc’s (up +1.39%) parent company Google with antitrust violations. “Google is a monopolist in the general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising markets,” according to the Justice Department’s complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. overnight. “Google aggressively uses its monopoly positions, and the money that flows from them, to continuously foreclose rivals and protect its monopolies.” Intel Corp (down -2.11%) confirmed a rumour circulated by The Wall Street Journal in announcing it has reached a deal to sell its flash-memory manufacturing business to South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc for ~US$9B