Wall Street delivered another set of milestones Thursday as a wave of buying sent U.S. stocks solidly higher, driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average above the all-time high it closed at in January.
The S&P 500, the benchmark for many index funds, also hit a new high, eclipsing the peak it reached last month.
Technology stocks, banks and health care companies accounted for much of the broad rally. Energy companies declined along with crude oil prices.
A weaker dollar, which helps U.S. exporters, and a mix of mostly encouraging economic reports helped put investors in a buying mood, a turnaround from earlier in the week when the U.S. and China each announced a new round of tariffs on each other’s goods, triggering a sell-off.
“Some of the economic data that came out today continued to show strength,” said Lindsey Bell, an investment strategist with CFRA. “Given the strength in the economy, backed by the stimulus from tax reform as well as just fiscal stimulus in general, that should be able to offset some of the impact that we’re going to get from tariffs as we go into the end of the year.”
ABDERDEEN, Md. — A 26-year-old woman reported to work Thursday at a Maryland warehouse and got into an argument, then used a gun to kill three people and wound several others before taking her own life, according to authorities and a witness account.
The suspect was a temporary employee at the Rite Aid distribution center in northeastern Maryland, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said at a news conference. Gahler’s officer later identified her as Snochia Moseley of Baltimore County.
“She had reported for her workday as usual, and around 9 a.m. the shooting began, striking victims both outside the business and inside the facility,” Gahler said. “We do not at this time have a motive for this senseless crime.”
Krystal Watson, 33, said her husband, Eric, works at the facility and told her told her that the suspect had been arguing with somebody else near a time clock after a “town hall meeting.”
“And she went off,” she said.
WILMINGTON, N.C. — The sun rises blazing hot over Wilmington, and the line for ice is shorter than it was the day before. The lines across town for tarps and bottled water have dwindled, as well, and Brian Gray takes that as a hopeful sign that desperation is giving way to something else.
Hurricane Florence had marooned this place since it roared ashore last Friday morning. Wilmington and its 120,000 residents survived the horror of the storm — which snapped telephone poles and sent trees into bedrooms — to find that the roads leading into the port city were flooded, leaving it an island with almost no electricity that no one could get into or out of.
Ice became their most precious commodity, traded like cash, and Gray, a handyman, took a temporary job hauling bags of it to cars that stretched for blocks for days.
Now, finally, far fewer cars are waiting.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Clapping and raising their hands to the sky, hundreds of people clad in white gathered at an 18th-century fort in the Puerto Rican capital on Thursday to remember the thousands who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria as the U.S. territory struggles to recover one year after the Category 4 storm hit.
Religious leaders and government officials recalled how Puerto Rico was ravaged by the storm that killed an estimated 2,975 people and caused more than an estimated $100 billion in damage.
“We’re still trying to comprehend the magnitude of the devastation,” said Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress.
She said the U.S. government has pledged $44 billion for the island’s recovery, but that it won’t be enough.
“We’re going to need a lot more to get back on our feet.”
From Associated Press