U.S. stocks gained ground on Thursday as investors piled into technology heavyweights ahead of their earnings reports, while upbeat economic data calmed worries about surging coronavirus cases.
The rebound from a more than 3% slide in Wall Street’s major indexes in the previous session underscored the heightened market volatility ahead of the presidential election next week.
“The market is just digesting yesterday’s action and looking forward to the big tech earnings tonight,” said Clark Kendall, chief executive officer of Kendall Capital in Rockville, Maryland.
Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc, which have seen a surge in demand for their products and services from people staying at home, rose between 1.5% and 3.4% ahead of their results after the closing bell.
Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, which will also report later in the day, jumped about 5% and 7%, respectively, as Pinterest Inc forecast a rebound in ad spending. Shares of the image-sharing company soared more than 28%.
The NYSE FANG+TM Index jumped 2.4%. Communication services, materials and technology rose the most among major S&P sectors.
Sentiment also got a boost from data that showed the U.S. economy grew at a record pace in the third quarter as the government poured out more than $3 trillion worth of pandemic raid. A separate report showed weekly unemployment claims fell last week.
“It’s positive data, but it’s a little bit backward looking because you have COVID-19 cases on the rise again which doesn’t really send a strong signal about the fourth quarter,” said Shawn Snyder, head of investment strategy at Citi Personal Wealth Management in New York.
The CBOE volatility index has surged to a 15-week high this week due to lack of fiscal stimulus, while the White House coronavirus task force urged for aggressive measures to curb the pandemic.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden holds a comfortable lead over President Donald Trump in national polls, but the race in battleground states that will likely decide the election are tighter than the national surveys.
At 12:41 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 99.39 points, or 0.37% to 26,619.34 and the S&P 500 gained 31.70 points, or 0.97% to 3,302.73. The Nasdaq Composite gained 157.39 points, or 1.43% to 11,162.26.
Coach owner Tapestry Inc climbed 4% as it beat quarterly profit estimates and forecast growth for the year as demand for luxury handbags and apparel rebounds in China from pandemic lows.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.5-to-1 ratio and by a 1.3-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted four new 52-week highs and 10 new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 36 new highs and 73 new lows.
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