U.S. stocks climb as Pepsi leads good rally

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks shook off some midday doldrums and rose for the fourth day in a row Tuesday as strong results from Pepsi helped household goods companies. The market is at its highest level since early February.

Shares of most kinds of large companies finished higher, with food and consumer products makers, energy companies and utilities making some of the biggest gains. Pepsi staged its biggest rally in almost nine years after a solid second-quarter report.

The S&P 500 is the highest it’s been since Feb. 1 and has climbed seven times in the past eight days, even though the U.S. and China are now in open conflict over trade. Wall Street has focused instead on last week’s strong jobs report for June, as well as company earnings reports.

Invesco Chief Global Market Strategist Kristina Hooper said investors are taking a risk by overlooking how damaging the trade war might get.

“This is all about pushing aside that which is messy and difficult to calculate,” she said. “It’s far easier to ignore it.”

The S&P 500 index added 9.67 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,793.84. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 143.07 points, or 0.6 percent, to 24,919.66.

The Nasdaq composite picked up 3 points to 7,759.20. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks lost 8.99 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,695.62 after big gains over the last five days. Slightly more stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange.

Major U.S. banks including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup will announce their results Friday morning, and most of the companies in the S&P 500 will report their results in the weeks after that.