Apple, Amazon help break skid
NEW YORK — After four days of modest losses, Apple and Amazon led the U.S. stock market to small gains on Thursday. Internet and health care companies rose while mining companies fell with metal prices.
The S&P 500 index rose 8.03 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,914. Despite its recent losing streak, the benchmark index is up more than 7 percent since the end of June. With one day left in the third quarter, the S&P 500 is on track for its best quarter since the end of 2013.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 54.65 points, or 0.2 percent, to 26,439.93. The Nasdaq composite climbed 51.60 points, or 0.6 percent, to 8,041.97. The Russell 2000 index of smallercompany stocks dipped 1.08 points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,690.53.
Apple and Amazon are the two most valuable U.S. companies, and analysts said each stock should keep climbing. Other market favorites including Facebook and Google parent Alphabet also rose.
Apple rose after JPMorgan Chase analyst Samik Chatterjee said the stock could climb another 20 percent by the end of next year.
Chatterjee said the company was successfully building up its service businesses such as music and payments, which could bring in 20 percent of Apple’s annual revenue in the next few years.
Chatterjee said the company might make acquisitions in the gaming, automotive or smart speaker businesses.
Interest rates slipped for a second day, which led to losses for banks, while the stronger dollar weighed on metal prices and on shares of the companies that mine those metals. Smaller companies, which have struggled in September, also fell.
Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said investors have been reluctant to get back into the stock market since the 200809 recession, and there are signs that’s changing.
“Retail investors have been underinvested for this whole expansion,” he said. “The economy is decent. The market is correctly pricing in a relatively low possibility of an all-out trade war.”
Apple rose 2.1 percent to $224.95. Elsewhere in the technology sector, Salesforce.com rose 1.3 percent to $160.43. Internet companies also rose. Alphabet rose 1.1 percent to $1,207.36 and Facebook rose 1.1 percent to $168.84.
Amazon rose 1.9 percent to $2,012.98 after Stifel analyst Scott Devitt forecast more revenue for its retail, advertising and Web services units and raised his price target to $2,525 a share. That would value Amazon at about $1.2 trillion.
Wren said many smaller investors have been reluctant to put too much money in the stock market, and with more U.S. workers nearing retirement age, that is probably not going to change.
Some experts worry when retail investors hurry into the market because it can be a sign stock prices are going to get too high.
But Wren said he’s not concerned about that possibility yet.
Bed Bath & Beyond plunged 21 percent to $14.86 after the home goods and furnishings company reported earnings that fell far short of what analysts were expecting.
The company also lowered its profit forecast for the rest of the year and said it expects lower sales. Its stock closed at its lowest price since March 2000 and has dropped from $75 in less than four years.
Several other companies that reported quarterly results also traded lower. Conagra Brands, the parent of Chef Boyardee and Hebrew National, fell 8.5 percent to $32.98 after its profit and sales fell short of Wall Street projections.