Banks and a mix of retailers, travel companies and restaurant chains account for much of the upward move.
Wall Street delivered more milestones Tuesday after a modest pickup in stocks nudged the S&P 500 to an all-time high and the Nasdaq composite climbed above 15,000 for the first time. The benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.2 percent after a relatively quiet day in the market. Banks and a mix of retailers, travel companies and restaurant chains accounted for much of the upward move. Those gains offset a slide in health care companies, household goods makers and technology stocks. Investors bid up shares in home builders after the government reported that sales of new U.S. homes rose modestly last month. Small-company stocks outpaced the rest of the market. Treasury yields mostly edged higher. The price of crude oil had its second solid gain in a row, clawing back more of the ground it lost over the previous two weeks. While investors have been monitoring the developments overseas in Afghanistan and with the coronavirus and its highly contagious delta variant, the absence of any new, bad news today may have helped keep the market moving higher, said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading & derivatives at Charles Schwab. “In a bull market, in an absence of negative catalysts, you tend to get some upside movement,” Frederick said. “It’s slow and gradual, but it continues to trudge forward.” The S&P 500 rose 6.70 points to 4,486.23. It was the index’s fourth-straight gain and its first record high since early last week.
