Dow, S&P hit fresh highs; investors eye Fed meeting

Technology companies led U.S. stocks modestly higher Monday, driving the market to another set of milestones.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index and Dow Jones industrial average finished at new highs. Both indexes also hit record highs Friday.

Solid gains by health care companies also helped lift the market, outweighing losses among banks and industrial stocks. Energy stocks rose along with the price of crude oil.

Investors had their eye on bitcoin futures, which made their market debut. But traders were mostly looking ahead to the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting of Federal Reserve policymakers.

“The market is kind of in a holding pattern, just sort of waiting for the Fed meeting,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.

The S&P 500 index rose 8.49 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,659.99. The index has risen on a weekly basis the past three weeks. The Dow gained 56.87 points, or 0.2 percent, to 24,386.03. The Nasdaq composite added 35 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,875.08. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks slipped 1.88 points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,519.84.

The Fed is scheduled to issue an interest rate policy updaten Wednesday. Economists expect the central bank to lift short-term rates by 0.25 percent. That would be the third interest rate hike by the central bank this year.

While inflation has remained low, the central bank has seen a path to gradually raise rates as the economy and labor market have strengthened.

The Labor Department said Monday that U.S. employers posted slightly fewer job openings in October than the previous month, but the number of people being hired increased. Last week, another report showed that employers added a net total of 244,000 jobs in October and 228,000 in November. The trend helped keep the unemployment rate at 4.1 percent.

“The Fed sees enough strength in the overall economy, despite the lack of inflation, to still go ahead and continue to hike rates,” Frederick said.

Technology companies accounted for much of the market’s gains Monday.

Symantec rose $1.24, or 4.4 percent, to $29.22. Apple gained up 1.9 percent after the website Apple Insider said the company is delivering new iPhones to customers at a faster pace. Apple also made news after it agreed to acquire the Shazam music-identification service for an undisclosed amount. The stock added $3.30 to $172.67.

Allergan led the gainers in the health care sector. The company climbed $4.96, or 3 percent, to $172.76.

Drugmaker Bluebird Bio surged 17.9 percent after it reported results from an early study of a cancer treatment that the company is developing with Celgene. Bluebird gained $30.65 to $201.80. Celgene added $1.91, or 1.8 percent, to $108.

Bitcoin futures rose on their first day of trading on a major U.S. exchange. Trading on the contract for the virtual currency began Sunday. The first-ever futures contract closed at $18,545.

U.S. employers posted slightly fewer job openings in October than the previous month, but the number of people being hired improved.

The Labor Department said Monday that nearly 6 million jobs were available at the end of October, down from 6.18 million in September. Manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers and the information sector advertised fewer jobs — an indicator of their possible intentions in the coming months.

“The leveling off of openings in recent months suggest a more moderate pace of hiring ahead,” said Sarah House, an economist

Eighteen climate scientists from the U.S. and elsewhere hit the jackpot Monday as French President Emmanuel Macron awarded them millions of euros in grants to relocate to France for the rest of Donald Trump’s presidential term.

The “Make Our Planet Great Again” grants — a nod to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan — are part of Macron’s efforts to counter Trump on the climate change front. Macron with the bank Wells Fargo.

But total hires rose 4.4 percent to 5.55 million. This indicates that even if employers are seeking fewer workers that they’re still looking to add staff. It also indicates that employers shook off a slowdown caused by hurricanes earlier this year. Leading sources of increased hiring came from restaurants and hotels, the health care sector, manufacturers and financial services.

This means that manufacturers, for example, added workers in October but they are now seeking fewer workers in the future.

For every job opening, there is now the equivalent of 1.1 unemployed jobseekers, the lowest ratio on record for data that go announced a contest for the projects in June, hours after Trump declared he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.

More than 5,000 people from about 100 countries expressed interest in the grants. A majority of the applicants — and 13 of the 18 winners — were U.S.-based researchers.

Macron’s appeal “gave me such a psychological boost, to have that kind of support, to have the head of state saying ‘I value what you do,’” said winner Camille Parmesan, of the University of Texas at Austin. The biology professor will back to 2001.

The government said last week that employers added a net total of 244,000 jobs in October and 228,000 in November. The unemployment rate stayed at 4.1 percent.

Despite the healthy job market, many people are staying in their jobs rather than departing for new ones. Departures are usually a sign that people are confident they can find new jobs that pay higher wages. The number of those quitting held steady for a second straight month at 3.18 million. Meanwhile, average hourly earnings have risen just 2.5 percent over the past 12 months, a relatively lackluster figure given the low unemployment rate. be working at an experimental ecology station in the Pyrenees on how human-made climate change is affecting wildlife.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Parmesan described funding challenges for climate science in the U.S. and a feeling that “you are having to hide what you do.”

Trump has expressed skepticism about global warming and said the Paris accord would hurt U.S. business by requiring a reduction in climate-damaging emissions.

“We will be there to replace”

Bitcoin’s debut on a major U.S. exchange is a hit so far, with the price of the firstever futures contract for the virtual currency rising 16 percent.

The futures contract that expires in January was up $2,440 to $17,900 Monday afternoon on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Trading began Sunday, and the price rose as high as $18,850, according to data from the CBOE.

The CBOE futures don’t involve actual bitcoin. They allow investors to make bets on the future direction of bitcoin.

The first session of futures trading fit right in with the frenzy surrounding bitcoin. Traffic to the CBOE website was so heavy right after the start of trading that the site experienced outages. The exchange also halted trading twice Sunday to stem volatility. The exchange operator has rules in place to stop trading after price swings of 10 percent.

Another large futures exchange, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, will start trading its own futures Dec. 18 but will use a composite of several bitcoin prices across a handful of exchanges.

The price of a bitcoin has soared since beginning the year below $1,000, hitting a peak of more than $16,858 Dec. 7 on the bitcoin exchange CoinDesk. As of 5 p.m. EST, it was trading at about $17,100 on CoinDesk.

How much actual investor interest there will be in these bitcoin futures is still up in the air. Many larger Wall Street brokerages and clearinghouses, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, are either not allowing customers to trade them or only allowing select clients to do so. U.S. financing of climate research, Macron told the winners in Paris on Monday.

“If we want to prepare for the changes of tomorrow, we need science,” he said.

The research of the winning recipients focuses on pollution, hurricanes and clouds. A new round of the competition will be launched next year, alongside Germany.

About 50 projects will be chosen overall, and funded with 60 million euros ($70 million) from the state and French research institutes.