S&P 500, DOW UP AS ALPHABET JUMPS, VOLATILITY EASES

The Dow and S&P 500 rose slightly on Wednesday, registering a third straight session of gains, with Alphabet Inc.’s shares hitting a record high following its strong quarterly results, Caroline Valetkevich reported for Reuters.

Alphabet shares ended up 7.3% and provided the biggest boost to the S&P 500. The Google parent late Tuesday posted results that topped quarterly sales expectations for its advertising and Cloud businesses, helped in part by the pandemic.

With recent stronger-than-expected results from Alphabet and other companies, S&P 500 companies are now on track to post earnings growth for the fourth quarter of 2020 and to defy expectations for another quarterly profit drop due to the pandemic, based on data from Refinitiv Wednesday.

The Cboe Volatility index was down, and wild swings in stock prices of GameStop and other social media favorites subsided following a recent trading frenzy. GameStop shares ended the day up just 2.7%.

“The broad tape continues to be strong,” said Michael O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford, Connecticut.

The recent retail trading activity is likely “to be here for a while,” said O’Rourke.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be here with the same intensity ... It’s hard to maintain that type of intensity. What we’ll probably see are coordinated movements in individual names by that crowd.”

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