Stocks wavered in afternoon trading on Wall Street Wednesday and hovered around their records set a day earlier, while oil prices held steady.
The S&P 500 rose 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 473 points, or 0.9%, as of 2:12 p.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.4%.
The S&P 500 and the Dow both set records on Tuesday, while the Nasdaq is 2% below its record. Every major index had been surging this week, giving August a strong start.
“The coiled spring investors have been waiting for has finally released, with the S&P 500 Index surging to record highs for the first time in two months,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, in a report.
The market has been generally rising as companies head into the closing stretch of their latest round of earnings reports with sharp overall gains. Three-quarters of the companies within the S&P 500 have reported results so far, and Wall Street expects profit growth of 50% when they are all finished.
