US Stocks Up 3rd Week Running, S&P 500 Hits Another Record High

NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2021) US stocks rebounded sharply Friday from the previous day's COVID-triggered sell-off to end on the up for a third straight week, with the S&P 500 index hitting another record high that extended its recent streak of all-time peaks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the broadest US equity barometer on the New York Stock Exchange, finished at 34,870, up 448 points or 1.3 percent. For the week, the Dow rose 0.2 percent.

The Nasdaq Composite index, which includes high-flying tech stocks such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, microsoft, Netflix and Google, finished up 142 points, or almost 1.0 percent, at 14,702. For the week, the Nasdaq rose 0.4 percent.

The S&P 500 index, which groups the top 500 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, rebounded by 49 points, or 1.1 percent, to close at 4,370. It hit a record high of 4,372 during the session. For the week, the S&P 500 rose 0.4%.

Stocks fell their most in three weeks on Thursday, with all three indexes losing about 1 percent on average, on worries that the United States might be headed for a "dangerous" fall season with the Delta variant of the coronavirus likely to spark another surge of infections. Already the dominant US variant of the virus, Delta is prevalent in states with the lowest vaccination rates, as well as lax safety measures that do not encourage masking, social distancing or capacity limits for events, experts said.