U.S. stocks cap day of listless trading with modest gains

Wall Street capped another day of listless trading Wednesday with a slight gain, extending the market’s winning streak to a third day.

Financial, materials and industrial companies accounted for much of the gain, outweighing losses in health care and real estate stocks as investors reviewed the latest batch of company earnings reports.

Stock indexes spent much of the day wavering between small gains and losses as traders waited for signs of progress in the latest round of trade talks between the U.S. and China.

The benchmark S&P 500 index, which has risen for the past three weeks, gained 4.94 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,784.70. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 63.12 points, or 0.2 percent, to 25,954.44.

The Nasdaq composite rose 2.30 points, or 0.03 percent, to 7,489.07. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies picked up 7.19 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,581.66.

Roughly 84 percent of S&P 500 companies have reported results for the last three months of 2018, delivering earnings growth of about 13 percent versus a year earlier, according to FactSet. First-quarter snapshots are expected to result in a 2.7 percent decline in earnings, however.

Despite the solid profit growth in the last quarter, investors are cautious about business conditions going forward as signs of weakness in the global economy emerge. Europe and China have both reported slower growth.

Uncertainty over the costly trade dispute between the world’s largest economies has clouded the outlook for company profits this year.

The Trump administration was set Thursday to resume high-level talks with Chinese officials after two days of preliminary talks by lower-level officials.

The two sides, aiming to ease a trade standoff that’s unnerved global investors and clouded the outlook for the world economy, held talks in Beijing last week. U.S. officials said those talks made some progress on difficult issues such as China’s blueprint for making its industries world leaders in advanced technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Trump administration has raised tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods and the U.S. is due to increase them on March 2, following a 90-day truce to allow time for the negotiations now underway. President Donald Trump has indicated the deadline might be extended if progress is being made.

Investors continued to assess corporate report cards Wednesday.

The Wednesday afternoon release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s meeting of policymakers last month didn’t hold any big surprises for investors.

Traders typically review the minutes in hopes of gleaning new insight into the central bank’s interest rate policy. At the meeting last month, Fed officials kept the central bank’s benchmark interest rate steady and, in a significant shift, sent a strong signal that they saw no need to raise rates anytime soon. That change helped drive the stock market higher in January.

Oil prices rebounded after an early slide. U.S. benchmark crude rose 1.5 percent to settle at $56.92 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the standard for international oil prices, gained 0.9 percent to close at $67.08 a barrel in London.

In other energy futures trading, wholesale gasoline climbed 2.2 percent to $1.60 a gallon. Heating oil added 1.2 percent to $2.02 a gallon. Natural gas dropped 1 percent to $2.64 per 1,000 cubic feet.