Stocks end mostly higher
Another choppy day of trading on Wall Street ended Tuesday with stocks finishing mostly higher, adding to the market’s recent string of gains.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 0.2%, its third straight gain. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.7%, extending its winning streak to a fifth day. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2%.
Bond yields gained ground. The yield on the 10year Treasury rose to 2.81% from 2.79% late Monday.
The market’s latest gyrations came as traders cautiously reviewed mostly encouraging financial results from major retailers.
Walmart jumped 5.1% after the nation’s largest retailer reported strong results that easily topped analysts’ forecasts. Home Depot rose 4.1% after also reporting better-than-expected results. The gains from both companies did much of the heavy lifting for the Dow.
Technology, healthcare and energy stocks fell, limiting the broader market’s advance. Broadcom fell 1.3%, Moderna slid 5% for the biggest drop in the S&P 500 and Marathon Oil fell 1.1%.
Retailers, consumer product makers and banks made solid gains.
In all, the S&P 500 rose 8.06 points to 4,305.20. The Dow gained 239.57 points to 34,152.01. The Nasdaq fell 25.50 points to 13,102.55.
Smaller-company stocks edged lower. The Russell 2000 slipped 0.82 points, or less than 0.1%, to 2,020.53.
U.S. crude oil prices fell 3.2%. European markets ended broadly higher and Asian markets closed mixed overnight.
Stocks had their best month in a year and a half in July, and the winning streak has been continuing into August partially on hopes that inf lation is easing. The latest government report on consumer prices showed that inflation essentially stalled from June to July.
Still, trading has been choppy, with major indexes swaying between gains and losses throughout each day.
The bumpy trading reflects at least partly a surge in “dip buyers,” or investors swooping in to buy stocks that have traded lower, said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.
“The dip buyers were just absent in the first half of the year, and whenever they did step in they got spanked every time,” he said. “That has changed now.”
The latest results from retailers show that spending remains solid, even as consumers face the hottest inflation in 40 years. Wall Street has been concerned that higher prices could eventually stunt the economy’s main engine of growth: consumer spending. Investors will get more updates on the retail sector this week, when Target reports its results Wednesday.
The Commerce Department will release its July retail sales report Wednesday. Economists surveyed by FactSet expect modest 0.2% growth from June.