Tech, health care drive stocks to records

NEW YORK — The market’s biggest winners this year, technology and health care, powered U.S. stock indexes to more alltime highs on Tuesday.

Huge technology companies like Apple and Facebook continued their ascent, while strong reports from companies including medical device maker Medtronic and construction and technical services company Jacobs Engineering helped health care and industrial companies, respectively.

Basic materials companies, which have done better than the rest of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, also rose. Telecommunications companies declined, while energy companies and banks didn’t do as well as the rest of the market.

Apple, Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, the five most valuable companies on the stock market, all rose more than 1 percent, and they’ve all had a very strong year. JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, said that’s not about to stop.

“They’re seeing better earnings, better sales, better growth,” he said. “It’s difficult to argue with that.”

The S&P 500, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite all set record highs, as did the Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks, which had struggled in recent weeks.

Big-name technology companies lead the way overall. Apple rose $3.16, or 1.9 percent, to $173.14 and Facebook added $3.12, or 1.7 percent, to $181.86. Health care companies climbed as well. Those two sectors are the best-performing parts of the market this year.

Homebuilders climbed after the National Association of Realtors said sales of homes grew in October. They’re down slightly from last year because there are so few houses on the market, but the tight supply and rising prices have sent homebuilder stocks soaring this year.

Along with those reports, investors were cheered by projections from Goldman Sachs analyst David Kostin, who forecast that the S&P 500 will rise 14 percent in 2018 if corporate taxes are cut.

Kostin, who didn’t think stocks would rise that much this year, now says the bull market could last three more years, with continued economic growth and lower taxes taking the S&P 500 to 3,100 by the end of 2020.

Kinahan, of TD Ameritrade, said the potential tax cuts might help stocks in another way: Usually, investors might sell some of their holdings after a betterthan-expected year like this one. But right now, they’re not sure what their taxes will look like in 2018.

“People may not be taking profits as aggressively at the end of this year as they would in a normal year because they’re not sure where the tax plan will come out,” he said.