U.S. stock indexes edge up as oil gives up half of its spurt

U.S. stock indexes ticked closer to record heights on Tuesday, but the modest moves belied plenty of churning underneath.

Oil prices and energy stocks slumped to give back nearly half of their huge gains from a day earlier. Rising prices for technology stocks and companies that sell to consumers, though, more than made up for those losses.

Treasury yields fell a second straight day as the Federal Reserve opened a two-day meeting on interest rates, where investors expect it to announce a cut for the second time in as many months.

The S&P 500 rose 7.74 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,005.70. It’s back to within 0.7 percent of its record set in late July.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 33.98, or 0.1 percent, to 27,110.80, and the Nasdaq composite gained 32.47, or 0.4 percent, to 8,186.02.

“We’re drifting here a little bit,” said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial. “It’s interesting to me, and somewhat encouraging, that the market has held up near its all-time highs despite all these concerns.”

The newest of those concerns arrived this past weekend, when an attack on a Saudi Arabian oil facility raised the risk of major disruptions to the world’s oil supply.

Crude surged more than 14 percent on Monday, about as much as it did when Iraq invaded Kuwait before the 1991 Gulf War, and concern rose that spiraling oil prices would act as a huge, de facto tax imposed around the world.