Business
Wall Street ends higher; banks gain following results, chips rally with TSMC
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both reported a rise in quarterly profit, helped by a flurry of dealmaking. Shares of Goldman rose 4.6%, giving the Dow its biggest boost, and Morgan Stanley gained 5.8%.
Earlier this week, other banks reported mixed results that weighed on the sector, along with worries about U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed one-year cap that would limit credit-card interest rates to 10%.
Investors are still buying stocks that are undervalued compared with tech, said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“It’s been growth, tech or bust in this market,” in recent years, he said. Today, “it’s the banks and old-school industrials” that are standouts. The S&P 500 industrials index notched a closing record high again.
Tech stocks also rose, led by chipmakers. The world’s main producer of advanced artificial intelligence chips, TSMC , predicted robust annual growth and flagged more U.S. manufacturing capacity was in the works. U.S.-listed shares of TSMC jumped 4.4%.
An index of semiconductors climbed 1.8%. Shares of Nvidia, Broadcom and chipmaking tool company Applied Materials all climbed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 292.81 points, or 0.60%, to 49,442.44, the S&P 500 gained 17.87 points, or 0.26%, to 6,944.47 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 58.27 points, or 0.25%, to 23,530.02.
With tech, “there was some worry as far as valuations – that they were getting a little too far ahead of themselves,” said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates Inc., an investment advisory firm, based in Toledo, Ohio.
“That’s been kind of squashed this morning with the news from Taiwan Semiconductor.”
Richly valued tech and growth stocks have lost some momentum recently as investors kicked off the year by chasing bargains.
Both mid-caps and the small-cap Russell 2000 have been outperforming the S&P 500 so far this year. The Russell 2000 reached a closing record high.
The equal-weighted S&P 500 has risen about 4% since the end of December versus an increase of 1.4% for the S&P 500.
Among other financial companies, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, gained 5.9% after a rally in markets lifted fee income and pushed its assets under management to a record $14.04 trillion in the fourth quarter.
Results from the banks essentially have kicked off the fourth-quarter U.S. earnings season. The season picks up steam next week with a more diverse group of companies set to report.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 19.12 billion shares, compared with the 16.81 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.92-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 759 new highs and 55 new lows on the NYSE.
On the Nasdaq, 2,683 stocks rose and 2,137 fell as advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.26-to-1 ratio.
