S&P 500 equals 2013 win streak
Investors worry over steady climb since healthy markets usually have sharp sell-offs
The last time the stock market had this long a winning streak, Twitter shares weren’t even a part of it yet.
Yet another gain for stocks on 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’s methodically climbed to record after record for much of this year as both the economy and corporate profits have improved.
The S&P 500 rose 14.33 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,552.07. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 113.75, or 0.5 percent, to 22,775.39 and the Nasdaq composite rose 50.73, or 0.8 percent, to 6,585.36. All three indexes added to their records 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 just 5 percent was more than a year ago.
“What’s really troubling most people more than anything is that we just go straight up,” said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade. “There hasn’t been a pullback. That’s what most on Wall Street are trying to come to grips with.”
Encouraging reports on the economy have been helping stocks, and on Thursday they included a stronger-than-expected rebound in U.S. factory orders during August and a drop in the number of workers applying for unemployment benefits last week.
Friday’s report from the Labor Department on monthly job growth will likely show momentum in the opposite direction, with most economists forecasting a dropoff in hiring. But that’s mostly because of damage caused by recent hurricanes, which hopefully will be only temporary.
Netflix jumped to the biggest gain in the S&P 500 Thursday after it raised the price on its most popular U.S. video streaming plan by 10 percent. Shares rose $9.94, or 5.4 percent, to $194.39.
On the losing end was student-loan servicing company Navient, which fell $2.09, or 14.3 percent, to $12.61. It said it was buying Earnest, a lender, for $155 million and would suspend its stock buyback program through 2018. Pennsylvania’s attorney general also alleged in a lawsuit filed Thursday that Navient improperly added billions of dollars in costs to borrowers.
In the commodities markets, benchmark U.S. crude rose 81 cents, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $50.79 per barrel. Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, rose $1.20 to $57 per barrel.