US: S&P 500, Dow close at record highs on tech, retail in focus

THE S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average notched record closing highs in a shortened Black Friday (Nov 29) session, lifted by technology stocks such as Nvidia, while retail was in focus as the holiday shopping season kicked off.

Information technology stocks helped boost the benchmark S&P 500 and blue-chip Dow, which was also aided by industrial stocks.

Nvidia gained 2 per cent, while Tesla rose 3.7 per cent.

Investors monitored shoppers’ response to deep Black Friday discounts. Adobe Analytics estimated consumers would spend a record US$10.8 billion in online purchases, up 9.9 per cent from Black Friday last year.

Shares of Target rose 1.7 per cent and Macy’s climbed 1.8 per cent.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6 per cent to 6,032.44 points after breaching its intraday record high of 6,025.42 set on Nov 26. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.4 per cent to 44,910.65 points. The Nasdaq gained 0.8 per cent at 19,218.17 points.

“Retailers do a lot of importing. Inventory levels are very important to their profitability and ability to kind of control margins, so they will be one of the industries in the (tariffs) crossfire,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.

“But so far … (things are) looking pretty solid for the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale.”

Chip stocks rebounded from Wednesday’s declines, sending the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index 1.5 per cent higher.

The small-cap Russell 2000 index also rose 0.4 per cent as Treasury bond yields retreated further from multi-month highs.

Wall Street’s main indexes had closed lower on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq leading declines, as technology stocks slumped on Thanksgiving eve on worries the Federal Reserve may be cautious about rate cuts following stubbornly strong US inflation data.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election earlier this month, along with his Republican Party winning the majority in both houses of Congress, provided the latest boost to equities.

Investors were pricing in expectations that Trump’s pro-business policies could spur economic growth and corporate profits. However, concerns prevailed that they could also stoke inflation, slow the pace of the Fed’s rate cuts and weigh on global growth.

Traders expect the US central bank to lower borrowing costs by 25 basis points at its December meeting, but see it pausing rate cuts in January, the CME Group’s FedWatch showed.

Crypto stocks rose on the back of gains in bitcoin, boosting MARA Holdings by 1.9 per cent.

Applied Therapeutics plunged 76 per cent after the US Food and Drug Administration declined to approve its drug for the treatment of a rare genetic metabolic disease.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.46-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 386 new highs and 63 new lows on the NYSE.

The S&P 500 posted 31 new 52-week highs and no new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 116 new highs and 31 new lows.

Volume on US exchanges was 8.15 billion shares during a shortened trading week, compared with the roughly 15 billion full-session average over the last 20 trading days.

For the week, the S&P 500 gained 1.06 per cent, the Nasdaq rose 1.1 per cent, and the Dow climbed 1.4 per cent. The Russell 2000 Small Cap index rose 1.5 per cent, after hitting a record high earlier in the week. REUTERS