President Joe Biden cited as economic progress Labor Department data that showed a declining number of Americans claimed unemployment insurance, news investors shrugged off earlier as Wall Street traded lower most of the session.
Value stocks again outperformed growth stocks, rising 1.2% in the former compared with a 0.1% slide in the latter, even as Apple Inc and Tesla Inc led the rally. Tesla added 1.6% and Apple 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 199.42 points, or 0.62%, to 32,619.48. The S&P 500 gained 20.38 points, or 0.52%, to 3,909.52 and the Nasdaq Composite added 15.79 points, or 0.12%, to 12,977.68.
Earlier, the Dow was higher while the Nasdaq fell, a reverse correlation that already has occurred far more this year than is typical in an entire year, said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer at the Bahnsen Group in Newport Beach, California. “It is happening because we’re vaccinating, it is happening as the economy reopens, it is happening because we’re going to get a really big, high single-digit GDP number this year,” he said.Shares of Nike Inc fell 3.4% as the sporting goods giant faced a Chinese social media backlash over its comments about reports of forced labor in Xinjiang.