Apple leads stock indexes higher
U.S. stocks climbed Thursday as Apple led a rally in technology companies and reached $1 trillion in value. Consumer product and healthcare companies rose as second-quarter results from corporate America continued to surpass investors’ expectations.
Stocks in Asia and Europe fell after the White House said it would consider even higher tariffs on Chinese imports, escalating the trade conflict between the world’s two biggest economic powers.
U.S. stocks opened lower as energy and basic materials companies slumped, but those early losses eased as the day went on. Solid results from companies including Clorox, drugmaker Regeneron and electric car maker Tesla sent the market higher.
Apple jumped again, and became the first publicly traded U.S. company to top $1 trillion in market value. The stock climbed 9% over Wednesday and Thursday, its biggest two-day move in more than four years, to hit the milestone.
GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives said Apple’s lofty price tag reflects its unique position as a technology company that sells popular products that work together and that have a loyal following.
“Once you buy one Apple device in a household, likely you’re going to buy multiple, three, four, five devices,” he said. “They’ve built a consumer product empire.”
Apple’s value rose almost $83 billion in the last two days. That’s as much as construction equipment maker and Dow component Caterpillar is worth. Other big technology companies also rose Thursday, recovering some of the losses they had absorbed late last week and early this week. Facebook and Microsoft both climbed.
The S&P 500 index rose 13.86 points, or 0.5%, to 2,827.22. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 7.66 points, or less than 0.1%, to 25,326.16. The Nasdaq composite jumped 95.40 points, or 1.2%, to 7,802.69. The Russell 2000 index of smallercompany stocks added 12.84 points, or 0.8%, to 1,682.10.
Apple got to the $1-trillion mark shortly before noon and finished with a gain of 2.9% to $207.39.
Tesla soared 16.2% to $349.54. Clorox rallied 6.2% to $142.44.
Bond prices edged higher. The yield on the 10year Treasury note fell to 2.99% from 3%.
The DAX index in Germany tumbled 1.5% and the CAC 40 in France lost 0.7%. Britain’s FTSE 100 slid 1%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index sank 1% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2.2%. The Kospi in South Korea shed 1.6%.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.9% to $68.96 a barrel in New York. Brent crude gained 1.5% to $73.45 a barrel in London.