Wall Street advanced in heavy trading on Friday, with the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing the book on their best June in generations, ahead of much-anticipated trade talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
All three major US stock indices gained ground at the close of the week, month, quarter and first half of the year, during which the US stock market has had a remarkable run.
The S&P 500 had its best June since 1955.
The Dow posted its biggest June percentage gain since 1938, the waning days of the Great Depression.
From the start of this year, after investors fled equities amid fears of a global economic slowdown, which sent stock markets tumbling in December last year, the benchmark S&P 500 jumped 17.3 percent, its largest first-half increase since 1997.
“The market came to the realization that the world is not going to end,” said John Ham, financial adviser at New England Investment and Retirement Group in North Andover, Massachusetts. “Also, [US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome) Powell did a 180 since [the Fed’s] last [interest] rate hike, which has put wind in our sails in the first half of the year.”
Trump yesterday said he eased restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co (華為) as part of a trade truce with Beijing.
Trump said Xi had promised to buy “tremendous” amounts of US agricultural products in exchange.
“We’re going to give them a list of things we’d like them to buy,” Trump said at a news conference after the meeting.
Financial stocks led the gains in the S&P 500 and the Dow after the big US banks passed the Fed’s “stress test,” with the central bank giving the companies a clean bill of health.
Trading volume spiked amid the annual restructuring of the Russell indices, traditionally one of the largest trading days of the year.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday rose 73.38 points, or 0.28 percent, to 26,599.96, the S&P 500 gained 16.84 points, or 0.58 percent, to 2,941.76 and the NASDAQ Composite added 38.49 points, or 0.48 percent, to 8,006.24.
All 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 ended the session in positive territory.
Financials, energy and tariff-vulnerable industrials were the biggest percentage gainers.
For the week, the Dow lost 0.72 percent, the S&P 500 retreated 0.87 percent and the NASDAQ fell 0.8 percent.
Shares of Apple Inc on Friday dropped 0.9 percent following its announcement that design head Jony Ive is leaving the company.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that the iPhone maker would move its Mac Pro production to China from the US.
Constellation Brands Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly results and raised its full-year guidance due to healthy beer demand, sending its shares up 4.6 percent.
In economic news, US consumer spending last month rose moderately and prices edged higher, implying a slowdown in economic growth and benign inflation pressures, providing the Fed rationales for a possible interest rate cut next month.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 2.84-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 2.66-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 23 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 84 new highs and 51 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 10.26 billion shares, compared with the 7.11 billion-share average for the full session over the past 20 days.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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