Wall Street ends higher with lift from tech and health care

NEW YORK» U.S. stocks couldn’t hold on to a big gain Wednesday, but they still finished broadly higher as technology and health care companies rose. That helped reverse some of the market’s big losses from the week before.

Stocks initially rallied after The Wall Street Journal reported that China’s government could make changes to its “Made in China 2025” economic development plan. That could be one step toward easing the dispute between the world’s two largest economies. The Dow Jones industrial average surged 458 points in morning trading but later gave back much of that gain.

“Anytime you get some semblance of good news on trade, you’ve had this tendency to see a pretty sharp rally,” said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist for Charles Schwab.

After taking steep losses at the end of last week, stocks have gyrated this week: Monday, they rallied to erase a big early loss; Tuesday, a big morning gain turned into a small decline.

Most of Wednesday’s gains evaporated in the afternoon. The hour-to-hour changes reflect in- vestors’ nervousness about the health of the global economy: Economic growth is expected to slow in 2019; the U.S.-China trade dispute and rising interest rates could make that slowdown more painful. Sonders said investors overlooked those threats for a time, but they can’t ignore them anymore.

“Some of these intraday reversals have been extraordinary,” Sonders said. “You have to go back to the financial crisis era to see ... such a big swing on consecutive days.”

The S&P 500 index rose 14.29 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,651.07. The Dow gained 157.03 points, or 0.6 percent, to 24,527.27. The Nasdaq composite jumped 66.48 points, or 0.9 percent, to 7,098.31. The Russell 2000 index of smallercompany stocks added 15.19 points, or 1.1 percent, to 1,455.32.

Among technology companies, chipmaker Broadcom gained 3.3 percent to $254.98. Amazon gained 1.2 percent to $1,663.54 to lead retailers, and Netflix jumped 3.6 percent to $274.88 as internet and media companies joined in the gains.

Among industrials, machinery maker Caterpillar climbed 1.7 percent to $125.37 and equipment rental company United Rentals surged 6.3 percent to $108.30.