Stocks post broad gains, led by energy companies and tech
Stocks closed solidly higher Wednesday, shaking off some recent doldrums and giving the S&P 500 its biggest daily gain since late August.
Energy companies did particularly well as prices for crude oil and natural gas climbed, and Microsoft helped pull the tech sector higher after announcing a dividend increase and a new stock buyback program.
The S&P 500 added 0.8%, as did the Nasdaq composite. Small-company stocks did even better with a 1.1% gain.
The gains were broad, with more than 80% of stocks in the benchmark S&P 500 rising. Health care and financial stocks also made solid gains.
Utilities, which investors shun when they’re more willing to take on risk, were the only sector to fall.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.30% from 1.27% late Tuesday.
Oil prices rose more than 3% and natural gas prices rose 3.7% as the oil and gas industry continues to sort through the damage caused by hurricane season in the Gulf. Disruptions have been more pronounced than originally expected, and there’s been some oil spills from some refineries.
ExxonMobil was up 3.1%, which helped lift the blue chips more than the rest of the market. Occidental Petroleum was up more than 5% and Marathon Oil was up 5.4%.
Casino stocks fell following reports of a possible crackdown on the industry by Chinese officials in Macau, the former Portuguese colony and gambling center.
Investors have been navigating a choppy market as they try to determine how rising cases of COVID-19 because of the highly contagious delta variant will impact economic growth. The employment market has been slow to recover and consumer spending has been tempered.
Wall Street will get get more information on jobs and consumer spending on Thursday when the Labor Department releases its weekly report on unemployment benefits and the Commerce Department releases retail sales data for August.