Stocks eke out gains Thursday amid earnings reports
Stocks eked out modest gains on Wall Street Thursday, extending the market’s winning streak into a third day and keeping the major indexes on pace to end the week higher.
The S&P 500 shrugged off a midday slide and rose 0.2%.
Banks, energy companies and industrial stocks weighed on the benchmark index, though solid gains by Apple, Microsoft and other big technology stocks helped nudge the index up.
Trading was mostly muted as investors reviewed the latest corporate earnings and a surprise increase in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits.
Still, the gains preserve stock indexes’ comeback following a sharp sell-off to start the week.
“The market is trying to come to terms with the big sell-off on Monday,” said David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial. “We’ve had a rebound that allowed us to recapture a lot of it yesterday, and today it seems as though the market is searching for the next directional catalyst, and hasn’t really found one.”
Joy said the next big market-moving event could come as early as next Wednesday, when Federal Reserve policymakers hold their next meeting.
A key question: Will the central bank provide new hints about when it might begin to unwind some of the support that’s helped keep the economy going during the pandemic now that inflation is on the rise.
The S&P 500 index rose 8.79 points to 4,367.48. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 25.35 points, or 0.1%, to 34,823.35.
The Nasdaq composite gained 52.64 points, or 0.4%, to 14,684.60. All three indexes remain close to the all-time highs they set early last week.
Wall Street’s smallest companies lost ground. The Russell 2000 index fell 34.57 points, or 1.5%, to 2,199.48.
The Labor Department reported that unemployment claims rose last week to 419,000, the most in two months and more than economists were expecting.
Mercedes-Benz maker says new car sales going electric
FRANKFURT, Germany – Daimler AG’s luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz says it is stepping up its transition to electric cars, doubling the share of sales planned by 2025 and sketching out a market scenario in which new car sales would “in essence” be fully electric by the end of the decade.
The shift to electric vehicles “is picking up speed – especially in the luxury segment, where Mercedes-Benz belongs,” said Ola Kallenius, CEO of Daimler AG. “The tipping point is getting closer and we will be ready as markets switch to electric-only by the end of this decade.”
The company plans to invest $47 billion in battery-driven vehicles between 2022 and 2080.
It says it also intends to work with partners on setting up eight factories producing battery cells – the individual components that are assembled into larger battery packs in different vehicles.
The company said Thursday it foresaw half its sales as battery-only or plug-in hybrid cars by 2025, up from a quarter in previous forecasts.
In the first six months of this year, such vehicles were 10.3% of total sales. The company sold 39,000 battery cars and 121,500 plug-in hybrids, which combine a battery with internal combustion.
The company’s statement updating its electric-vehicle strategy portrayed going all-electric as a “market scenario” the company intended to be ready for, rather than as a fixed deadline for abandoning sales of diesel or gasoline cars.
The company said it was “getting ready to go electric by the end of the decade, where market conditions allow.”
In Europe, the share of electric cars is increasing, heavily driven by regulation and government incentives.
Mercedes said Thursday that from 2025 all newly launched vehicle architectures would be electric only, referring to mechanical structures that can be shared among different models.
From wire reports