(Reuters) - After a seven-month stall, Wall Street’s bull market looks back on track, thanks to Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and other high-flying technology and consumer discretionary companies.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 21, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The widely followed S&P 500 .SPX stock index rose as much as 0.57 percent on Tuesday to 2,873.23, putting it above its previous record high of 2,872.87 on Jan. 26, although it failed to close above that high.
Closing above the January record would mean that the benchmark index ended a correction on Feb. 8, according to some investors.
Bolstered by quarterly earnings reports and a rise in stock buybacks, the S&P 500 has gained over 2 percent in the past month.
Confirmation that the bull run remains alive comes on the day the S&P 500 matches its longest rally in history, 3,452 days between November 1990 and March 2000, according to S&P Dow Jones indices. On Wednesday, it could claim the title of longest ever.
Following its January high, the S&P 500 slumped 10.2 percent over two weeks, just meeting many investors’ definition of a market correction and raising fears that nearly a decade of gains on Wall Street might be over.
Since then, Wall Street has splintered: Small caps have soared thanks to deep corporate tax cuts, while companies exposed to global trade have underperformed, with some investors worried about U.S. President Donald Trump’s feud with China and other trading partners over import tariffs.
After steep drops in February and March, the S&P 500 inched slowly back toward record highs as sweeping tax cuts sent earnings sharply higher and provided cash for companies to
