Stocks eked out modest gains on Wall Street Thursday, extending the market’s winning streak into a third day and keeping the major indexes on pace to end the week higher, AP reports.
The S&P 500 shrugged off a midday slide and rose 0.2 percent. Banks, energy companies and industrial stocks weighed on the benchmark index, though solid gains by Apple, Microsoft and other big technology stocks helped nudge the index up.
Trading was mostly muted as investors reviewed the latest corporate earnings and a surprise increase in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits. Still, the gains preserve stock indexes’ comeback following a sharp sell-off to start the week.
“The market is trying to come to terms with the big sell-off on Monday,” said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial. “We’ve had a rebound that allowed us to recapture a lot of it yesterday, and today it seems as though the market is searching for the next directional catalyst, and hasn’t really found one.”
Joy said the next big market-moving event could come as early as next Wednesday, when Federal Reserve policymakers hold their next two-day meeting. A key question: Will the central bank provide new hints about when it might begin to unwind some of the support that’s helped keep the economy going during the pandemic now that inflation is on the rise.
The S&P 500 index won 8.79 points, at 4,367.48. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 25.35 points, or 0.1 percent, at 34,823.35. The Nasdaq composite gained 52.64 points, or 0.4 percent, at 14,684.60.
All three indexes remain close to the all-time highs they set early last week.
Wall Street’s smallest companies lost ground. The Russell 2000 index fell by 34.57 points, or 1.5 percent, at 2,199.48.
