Markets Right Now: Stocks open higher on Wall Street

The S&P 500 index showed 60 new 52-week highs and one new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 135 new highs and eight new lows.

The technology-focused index is still negative for the year and would have to gain nearly 5% to regain the closing high it reached last July.

Story will be updated shortly.

NEW YORK (AP) – Stocks are rising in afternoon trading Tuesday, putting the market on track for another milestone. Technology stocks led the way higher on Monday, and the Nasdaq Composite hit its highest level this year. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 31.88 points or 0.64 per cent at 4,988.64. That is 35 points higher than its previous closing high set on May 19 past year.

On Monday, the S&P gained 0.3 percent to close at 2,137.16.

USA stocks extended their rally on Monday, with the S&P 500 Index reaching its highest level on record as investors continued to rally behind last month’s stellar jobs report. The company beat Wall Street expectations in both earnings and revenue. The stock jumped 55 cents, or 5.4 percent, to $10.69. Overall, the news from corporate America is not expected to be good, with analysts estimating S&P 500 will be down 5.2% overall from a year earlier.

SEAGATE SURGE: Seagate Technology jumped $4.45, or 19 percent, to $28.54 after forecasting strong sales.

Holding up earnings are consumer discretionary and healthcare companies, which have expanded profit by at least 11 per cent. Banks have also contributed – income has climbed 6 per cent. While he has released few details, investors are betting he’ll keep flooding the markets with money by expanding bond purchases using newly printed money in a program known as quantitative easing. Prospects for energy companies have stopped getting worse after crude staged an 85 per cent rally from a 12-year low of just above $27 a barrel in February, though the price remains 57 per cent below its peak in 2014.

The majority of the S&P 500’s ten main sectors recorded gains.

ELSEWHERE IN ASIA: South Korea’s Kospi edged up 0.1 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.7 percent.

Many analysts expect the Bank of England to lower its benchmark lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.25% at its meeting Thursday to counter any potential short-term negative impact on the United Kingdom economy from the Brexit vote.

Recent reports on manufacturing and the service sector also indicated a positive trend, with USA economic growth expected to be “meaningfully higher in the second quarter than the first”, said Russell, pointing to projections of 2.4 percent growth in the second quarter following GDP of only 1.1 percent in the first three months of the year. Britain’s FTSE 100 was flat.

Benchmark U.S. crude added $2.04 to close at $46.80 a barrel in NY. Brent crude, a standard for global oil prices, lost 64 cents to $46.12 a barrel in London.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.43% from 1.36%.

Gains in shares of Italian banks helped fuel the rise, with UniCredit ending up more than 13 percent.

The U.S. dollar climbed to its highest against the yen since July 1 and was near 102.8 yen versus the greenback late Monday.