US: Stocks close higher as Dow crosses 43,000 milestone

WALL Street stocks finished higher on Monday ahead of a slew of high-profile corporate earnings, pushing the Dow and the S&P 500 to fresh records.

The broad-based S&P 500 closed up 0.8 per cent at 5,859.85, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up 0.5 per cent at 43,065.22 - the first time it has closed above 43,000.

The tech-rich Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9 per cent to finish the day at 18,502.69, spurred by a 2.4 percent increase in the share price of chipmaker Nvidia, which closed at a new high.

Traders now value the US-based chip designer at more than US$3.4 trillion, making it the world’s second-most valuable publicly traded company, after Apple.

The market “just continues to sort of squeeze higher, led by primarily the mega cap stocks,” Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare told AFP.

“You have a market that clearly is continuing to show no signs of breaking here,” he added. “And that, I think, is kind of keeping people fearful about missing out on further gains.”

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Elsewhere on Wall Street, McDonald’s and UnitedHealth Group finished up 1.6 per cent and 1.2 per cent, respectively.

Traders are eying a busy week of earnings results ahead from US companies including Netflix, Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble. AFP