Markets Right Now: US stocks edge higher in early trading

Us stock indexes hit record intraday highs for the second straight day on Tuesday, with the Dow topping 19,000 and the S&P 500 moving past 2,200 as the post-election rally continued.

At 9:42 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 42.66 points, or 0.22 per cent, at 19,125.84, after hitting 19,138.51.

The commodity story – on hopes of a global fiscal stimulus push – dominated as miners led the MSCI All-Country World Index higher while S&P500 futures on the S&P 500 Index advanced 0.3 percent.

More noteworthy: the Nasdaq Composite hit new highs as the index gained 0.34% on the day at 5,398.92.

Caterpillar rose 2.7% to $96.16, while the Dow transportation average rose 0.8%.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.36-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.64-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 0.24 of a point at 15,075.44.

“S&P, a much broader index, 500 companies are in there, it’s up about 3 percent in the last month”. For the week, the Dow and Nasdaq gained 1.5 percent, while the S&P gained 1.4 percent. The U.S. currency hasn’t been this strong since March 2003.

Investors have bet that President-elect Donald Trump’s economic proposals-including massive corporate tax cuts and financial and environmental deregulation-will spur higher levels of economic growth.

The losers among the 10-largest tech companies: San Francisco-based Salesforce tumbled 0.8 percent, Foster City-based Gilead Sciences slid 0.7 percent, San Jose-based Cisco System was down 0.5, San Jose-based Adobe Systems was down 0.4 percent and Menlo Park-based Facebook fell 0.3 percent.

Drugmaker Eli Lilly plunged 14% early Wednesday after it said a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease failed in a clinical trial. Online shopping on Thanksgiving Day itself delivered $1.15 billion in sales, an increase of 13.6 per cent over previous year, according to Adobe Systems Inc.

On Wednesday, the Dow and S&P 500 closed at their highest levels ever. Of that revenue, $449 million came via a mobile devices – 58.6% more than past year. Benchmark U.S. crude added 21 cents to $48.24 per barrel in NY. Biogen sank $13.58, or 4.3 percent, to $304.53.

European markets ended on a positive note, with the Stoxx 600 index gaining 0.3 percent at the close. Video game publisher Electronic Arts rose $1.21, or 1.6 per cent, to $78.96.

Oil prices are spiraling, as anxiety grows ahead of next week’s OPEC meeting, in which a crude production cut is expected to be discussed. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 each rose 0.3%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.4 per cent to 22,578.18.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior market analyst at London Capital Group, said: “Online commerce businesses will be under close watch, as half of Black Friday sales are expected to occur online”.