Stocks give up part of early gain, still end higher

Stocks overcame NEW YORK — a late-afternoon burst of selling and closed higher Tuesday, as gains in big technology companies outweighed losses in banks and elsewhere in the market.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5% after being up 1.1% earlier. It’s the second straight sizable gains for the benchmark index following its worst week since June.

High-flying technology stocks, which have been driving themarket higher throughout the pandemic, abruptly lost altitude earlier this month amidworries that their prices had simply climbed too high, even after taking into account their tremendous growth.

But the past two days has marked a reversal of that trend, with shares in technology companies and others that play a key role in online access and commerce climbing again. Microsoft rose 1.6% Tuesday, while Amazon gained 1.7% and Zoom Video climbed 1.8%.

A key reason tech stocks are climbing again is that investors’ expectations that the companies’ profits will boom as even more of daily life shifts online haven’t changed.

“The things that are doingwell or are beneficiaries or are working in this environment, for good reason, are the things that are goingup,” saidTomMartin, senior portfolio manager with Globalt Investments. “That isn’t going to change until we get a notable change in one of the things that are uncertain: The virus itself and the effect that’s having on the economy, and whether we get anything new on the fiscal stimulus front.”

TheS&P500rose 17.66points to 3,401.20. TheDowJonesIndustrial Average inched up 2.27 points, or less than 0.1%, to 27,995.60. The index swung between a gain of 237 points and loss of 61. The Nasdaq, which is heavily weighted with tech stocks, climbed 133.67 points, or 1.2%, to 11,190.32.