There remain many investors who don’t trust this haphazard market, so are still sitting on a lot of cash on the sidelines. Today’s benchmark may just move many of them back into stocks and keep this bull market running a good deal longer. As today’s expert says, “The behavior of the retail investor is more important than ever.” What moved things up was Wall Street’s total disregard of recent bad data for retail sales and industrial output, both of which are considered transitory due to the hurricanes. If that proves to be true, it’s good news for everyone. If volume is any consideration, the psychological impact was indeed felt. Trading was up substantially at 8.5 billion shares.
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SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 / 5:45 pM
Wall
Street hits record highs, S&P 500 pierces 2,500
DJ: 22,268.34 +64.86 NAS: 6,448.47
+19.38 S&P: 2,500.23
+4.61 9/15
(Reuters) - Wall Street
reached record highs on Friday, with the S&P 500 surpassing 2,500 points as
telecommunications shares rose and technology bounced back after two days of
declines. The S&P 500’s breach of
the 2,500-mark came less than four months after it closed above 2,400, and
brought 2017’s gain to nearly 12 percent.
Professional investors frequently say they see little special significance
in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting
round-numbers in the hundreds and thousands. But such milestones do affect the sentiment of
investors on Main Street, said Phil Blancato, head of Ladenburg Thalmann
Asset Management in New York. “People are concerned about
missing out as the market continues to rally. They think maybe they need to
finally jump in,” Blancato said. “The behavior of the retail investor is more
important than ever.”
The S&P 500 information technology sector .SPLRCT rose 0.30
percent, powered by an Nvidia-led surge in chipmakers, while Apple rose 1.01
percent in its first gain since unveiling new iPhones on Tuesday. The semiconductor index .SOX surged 1.71
percent, boosted by Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) 6.32-percent jump to a record high
after Evercore ISI raised its price target on the stock.
AT&T (T.N) rose 2.15 percent and Verizon
Communications (VZ.N) added 1.44 percent. Along with
T-Mobile, they are offering deals for the newest iPhones that are less generous
than in the past.
Wall Street largely
shrugged off reports showing an unexpected drop in U.S. retail sales last month
and the first drop in industrial output since January, both in part due to the impact of
Hurricane Harvey.
“Investors are keeping an eye on the retail sales data, thinking it may be transitory,
and are focusing on growth areas such as technology, which is mostly immune to
policy decisions in D.C. and has avoided all the global noise,” said Michael
Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird
in Milwaukee.
U.S. stocks have surged this year, despite turmoil in the White
House, doubts about President Donald Trump’s ability to push through his
pro-business reforms, uncertainty over the timing of interest rate hikes, and
lately, tensions over Pyongyang’s missile tests.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose
0.29 percent (+64.86) to end at 22,268.34 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX gained
0.18 percent (+4.61) to 2,500.23, records for both. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added
0.3 percent (+19.38) to 6,448.47.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
1.76-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.47-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
Earlier, North Korea fired a second missile in as many weeks
over Japan, drawing criticism from global leaders but barely moving shares as
investors await the next catalyst - the Federal Reserve’s meeting on Sept.
19-20.
The S&P 500 is trading near 17.6 times expected earnings,
down from 17.9 at the end of July but still much higher than its 10-year average
of 14.3, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream.
Boeing (BA.N) rose 1.53 percent to a record high
after Canaccord Genuity raised its price target for the stock. Among the laggards was Oracle (ORCL.N), which sank 7.67 percent, its worst
day in more than four years after disappointing forecasts for its profit and
cloud business.
About 8.5
billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, above the 20-day average
of 5.9 billion shares.
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