D. Marie On Thursday, Wall Street climbed to new highs as the increase of the prices of oil supported energy stocks and the positive forecast from U.S Delta Air Lines pushed up the airline stocks.
Brent crude surpassed $70 a barrel and U.S. crude increased 1.57 percent to $64.58 per barrel, its highest since December 2014, advanced by an unexpected decline in U.S. production as well as the decline in crude inventories. Chevron gained 3.2 percent and Exxon gained 1.5 percent, advancing the S&P energy index 2.24 percent.
Delta Air Lines increased by just about 2 percent after reporting a positive quarterly profit and forecast, which helped the Dow Jones U.S. Airlines index to move up 2.25 percent.
“You see this continued rotation into stocks that will accelerate with the economy,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading. “Energy is in a good space with crude above 64 bucks and you have industrials being driven by airlines stocks.”
At 12:20 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 119.54 points, or 0.47 percent, at 25,488.67 and the S&P 500 was up 10.06 points, or 0.37 percent, at 2,758.29. The Nasdaq Composite was up 28.63 points, or 0.4 percent, at 7,182.20.
Investor focus is on quarterly earnings, which begin Friday starting with JPMorgan and Wells Fargo. S&P 500 companies’ earnings are anticipated to improve by 11.8 percent on an average.
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Wal-Mart moved up 0.34 percent following the world’s largest retailer decision to increase their entry-level wages for hourly employees to $11 an hour in February because of the corporate tax cuts.
Investors disregarded the data that disclosed U.S. producer prices declined for the first time last month in nearly 1-1/2 years and that weekly jobless claims increased for the fourth week in a row to over a three-month high.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,103 to 762. On the Nasdaq, 2,140 issues advanced and 771 declined.
