Many factors help to keep stocks soaring

NEW YORK — It’s the market that continues mostly upward, even though there’s still plenty to worry about.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq closed at record highs yet again on Tuesday, and the S&P 500 closed barely below the all-time high it reached a day earlier.

The gains in recent weeks have been driven by company earnings that haven’t been nearly as terrible as Wall Street was expecting, interest rate cuts, hopes for a trade truce and a steadily growing In all, the S&P 500 is up 22.7 percent so far this year, putting it on pace for its best year since 2013.

The upbeat mood marks a pivot from the summer, when worries about trade, Britain’s potentially messy exit from the European Union and the slowing global economy loomed over the market.

Here’s a closer look at the factors that have been sending the U.S. stock market to record highs this fall.

Corporate earnings

Wall Street got through the of third-quarter earnings season last week, and the results were much better than what investors had been anticipating.

As of Friday, 71 percent of the members of the S&P 500 index have reported their results, and 76 percent of them have reported better-than-forecast results, according to FactSet. Also, 61 percent have reported higher-thanexpected sales, which is important in the wake of concerns about an economic slowdown and the U.S.-China trade war.

Durable economy

The U.S. economy has repeat-economy. edly defied fears of a recession, which had resurfaced in late summer and early fall as trade tensions escalated. Reports on jobs, growth and consumer confidence in the past couple of weeks have pointed to an economy that is overcoming global threats and expanding for a record-long 11th straight year.

Defusing global threats

One of the biggest drags on business confidence and investment has been the uncertainty and higher costs injected by the Trump administration’s trade war with China. The administrabulk tion has imposed tariffs on roughly three-quarters of China’s exports. Beijing has retaliated with tariffs on most U.S. exports to China.

Yet since early October, a thaw has developed. The two sides have moved toward a potential first-stage deal that probably would lead to the cancellation of further tariffs.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cited the easing global tensions as a factor in why the Fed will likely keep interest rates unchanged when it next meets in December after three rate cuts this year.