Wall Street piles more onto big start to year as tech surges

Wall Street’s bang to start the year got even bigger Thursday as tech stocks and a surge for Facebook’s parent company led the market higher.

The S&P 500 rallied

1.5% a day after hitting its best level since August. The Nasdaq soared 3.3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1% because it has less of an emphasis on tech.

Meta helped lead the way with a 23.3% leap after it reported better revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected and said it expects to spend less this year than earlier forecast. While its latest profit fell short of expectations, Facebook’s parent announced a program to buy back $40 billion of its stock.

Stocks had already been on the upswing through the start of the year on hopes that the Federal Reserve might be set to pause soon on its hikes to interest rates. Such increases help stamp out inflation but also hurt the economy and investment prices.

A day earlier, stocks and bonds took off after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is seeing progress in its battle against inflation. Markets took that as a cue that a pause might indeed be imminent, and investors even raised bets for cuts to rates late this year. That’s despite Powell saying on Wednesday that a couple more rate hikes will likely be appropriate to get inflation down to the Fed’s target. He also said he did not foresee any rate cuts in 2023.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 60.55 points (1.5%) to 4,179.76. The

Dow fell 39.02 (0.1%) to 34,053.94. The Nasdaq gained 384.50 (3.3%) to 12,200.82. The Russell 2000 jumped 40.41 (2.1%) to 2,001.22.