NEW YORK -- Blue-chip stocks shot higher in the final 30 minutes of trading today to notch their fourth consecutive record close, after floundering for most of the session on conflicting economic data. Dow rises 27.65
to top 8,800The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 27.65 points at 8,803.05, the first time above 8,800. Broader indexes also rose to record highs, boosted by technology shares.
Advancers led decliners by a 4-to-3 margin on the New York Stock Exchange, with 1,660 up, 1,256 down and 578 unchanged. NYSE volume was 585.7 million shares down from yesterday's 628.74 million.
The S&P 500 rose 4.22 to 1,089.74, and the NYSE composite index rose 1.76 to 567.38.
The Nasdaq index gained 11.70 to close at 1,799.98. The small company-dominated American Stock Exchange composite index rose 4.04 to 726.80 and the Russell 2000 index climbed 2.12 points to 474.30.
Blue-chip stocks opened higher but began to soften at mid-morning as bond prices fell as much as 1/2 point. But the 30-year Treasury bond recovered and was up 3/16 point, or $1.871/2 per $1,000 in face value, by late afternoon, while its yield fell rose to 5.89 percent from 5.9 percent late yesterday.
Larry Wachtel, a market analyst at Prudential Securities, said "an ocean of liquidity" continues to buffer any downturn in stocks, even in the face of wage inflation and lower earnings projections.
"This is simply an unrelenting bull market," Wachtel said, "and where it ends, I really don't know. Each time we pull back, people are conditioned to go in and buy."
Bond prices weakened this morning after the Labor Department said the nation's consumer prices, held in check by plummeting energy prices, rose a moderate 0.1 percent in February.
The overall rate was in line with expectations, but the core rate, minus the volatile food and energy sectors, was up 0.3 percent, slightly above analysts' expectations of a 0.2 percent rise, causing some economists to worry that the economy may be headed in an inflationary direction.
Also disappointing to inflation worriers was a separate Commerce Department report that the nation's trade deficit in goods and services shot up 10.05 percent to $12 billion in January, with the imbalance in goods alone reaching an all-time high.
Troubled Asian economies were importing fewer American goods, hurting export sales to the region, and, through currency devaluations, cutting the price of Asian goods on U.S. shelves, Commerce said.
Imports were down 1 percent in January, but exports fell even more, 2.6 percent.
While bond investors fretted, however, stock investors were largely unfazed by that news, as well as by the news that analysts at First Call Corp. have slashed their first-quarter earnings growth projections for S&P 500 companies to 1.7 percent from 10.4 percent.
Stock buyers are "in denial about what is going on with earnings," Chuck Hill, First Call's director of research, said in an interview on CNBC Thursday.
"The last time it got down that low was in 1991, when we were in a recession," he said. "I think it's a big red flag."