Stocks climb; S&P 500 gain is 8th straight

The last time the stock market had this long a winning streak, Twitter shares weren’t even part of it yet.

Yet another gain for stocks Thursday sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 index higher for an eighth straight day, its longest winning streak since July 2013, which was months before Twitter shares started trading publicly. It’s the latest step higher for a market that has climbed to record after record for much of this year as the economy and corporate profits have improved.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones industrial average and Nasdaq composite all added to the records they set a day earlier, again.

All those moves higher actually have some professional investors a bit nervous, because even the healthiest markets tend to have some sharp sell-offs from time to time. The last time the S&P 500 had a pullback of even 5% was more than a year ago.

Encouraging reports on the economy have been helping stocks, and Thursday they included a strongerthan-expected rebound in U.S. factory orders during August and a drop in workers applying for unemployment benefits last week.

Friday’s Labor Department report on monthly job growth will probably show momentum in the opposite direction: Most economists forecast a drop in hiring. But that’s mostly because of recent hurricane damage.

Netflix jumped 5.4%, to $194.39, the biggest gain in the S&P 500 on Thursday, after it raised the price on its most popular U.S. video streaming plan by 10%.

Constellation Brands climbed 4% to $209.25 after it reported stronger quarterly earnings and raised its profit forecast. The company has been focusing on the higher end of the beer, wine and spirits markets.

Big technology companies made solid gains. Alphabet jumped 1.9%. Facebook and Microsoft each rose 1.7%. Apple rose 1.2%.

On the losing end was student-loan servicing company Navient, which sank 14.3% to $12.61. It said it was buying Earnest, a lender, for $155 million and would suspend its stock buyback program through 2018. Also, Pennsylvania’s attorney general alleged in a lawsuit that Navient improperly imposed billions of dollars in costs on borrowers.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 2.34% from 2.32%. Higher interest rates tend to help financial stocks on the expectation that banks will make bigger profits from lending, and financials in the S&P 500 rose 1%.

The dollar fell to 112.85 yen from 112.98 yen. The euro fell to $1.1708 from $1.1764, and the British pound fell to $1.3116 from $1.3250.

Benchmark U.S. crude rose 81 cents, or 1.6%, to settle at $50.79 a barrel. Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, rose $1.20 to $57 a barrel. Heating oil rose 1 cent to $1.79 a gallon. Wholesale gasoline rose 3 cents to $1.61 a gallon. Natural gas fell 2 cents to $2.92 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold fell $3.60 to $1,273.20 an ounce. Silver rose 1 cent to $16.64 an ounce. Copper rose 9 cents to $3.05 a pound.