US stocks edge up on Greece hopes

US stocks have closed slightly higher as investors speculate that last-ditch talks will produce an agreement between Greece and its creditors.

European markets closed with bigger gains on Thursday. Chinese stocks rose sharply overnight after the government’s latest efforts to halt a plunge.

The New York Stock Exchange said a four-hour outage in its trading systems on Wednesday was caused by problems with a software upgrade.

Walgreens Boots Alliance jumped 4%.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 33 points, or 0.2%, to 17,548. The Dow slumped 261 points the day before.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 increased four points, or 0.2%, to 2,051 and the Nasdaq gained 12 points, or 0.3%, to 4,922.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.30%.