S&P 500 Climbs to New Record High

Wall Street fluttered to a record Tuesday after US stock indexes drifted through a mixed day of trading.

• The S&P 500 rose 14.95 points, or 0.2%, to 6,129.58 to finish just above its all-time closing high set last month.
• The The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 10.26 points, or less than 0.1%, to 44,556.34.
• The Nasdaq composite rose 14.49 points, or 0.1%, to 20,041.26.

Entergy jumped 6% to help lead the market after the electric company reported stronger profit than analysts expected. It joined a lengthening list of US companies that have topped profit expectations for the end of 2024.

Entergy's rise helped offset a 5.5% drop for Conagra Brands, which lowered its forecasts for upcoming profit and other financial measures, the AP reports. The food company said supply issues have hurt two of its product lines: frozen vegetables and frozen meals containing chickens. Meta Platforms fell 2.8% in its first drop in 21 days.

US stocks have broadly climbed back toward record heights even after big recent disruptions seemed set to derail their long, upward trend that began in 2022. Hanging over everything has been the threat of a punishing global trade war following President Trump's announcements of tariffs . But Wall Street has been taking such actions increasingly in stride, believing they are merely tools for negotiations and that they'll ultimately prove to be less painful for markets and the economy than they may seem initially.

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Then there's DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial-intelligence startup that said it was able to match the performance of big US rivals without having to use top-of-the-line chips. That raised worries about a pullback in AI investment, which has been a central reason for the market's stellar gains in recent years. But big US companies have since said in recent weeks they still plan to invest billions of dollars in AI, even with DeepSeek's disruption. Such optimism has global fund managers feeling so confident that they're piling into stocks and holding only 3.5% of their portfolios in the safety of cash, according to a survey by Bank of America. That's the lowest since 2010, strategist Michael Hartnett says in a BofA Global Research report.

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