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Investing.com – The Dow closed above 30,000 for the first time ever Tuesday as value stocks continued to ride the wave of positive vaccine news and easing uncertainty over the U.S. presidential transition.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.54%, or 454 points, and is up more than 60% since its March lows. The S&P 500 was up 1.62%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 1.31%.
Investor hopes for an orderly transition of power were given a boost after the General Services Administration informed President-elect Joe Biden that federal resources will be made available for his transition into the Oval Office.
The news comes as market participants appear to approve of former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as Biden’s Treasury Secretary nominee.
“Yellen is seen as a very credible choice for the position overall and specifically, well equipped to drive the recovery from the destruction caused by the pandemic as she helped navigate the country in the aftermath of the Great Recession,” Stifel said in a note.
Value stocks – those hitched to the performance of the economy – continued to rack up gains as investor bets on a quick roll out of vaccines, speeding up the reopening of the economy. Pharmaceuticals companies including Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) and AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) have released positive vaccine news over the past three weeks.
Financials, industrials, and energy paved the way for the broader market rally, with the latter closing up more than 5% on rising oil prices.
Oil prices jumped 4% to their highest since the pandemic begun, on optimism over the demand outlook for 2021.
Industrials, meanwhile, were pushed higher by an ongoing rally in the airlines, with American Airlines Group (NASDAQ:AAL) and United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) up more than 9%. Boeing (NYSE:BA) was up 5%.
The backdrop of mixed economic data and further signs the U.S. consumer, the backbone of the economy, is in trouble did little to thwart the rally on Wall Street.
The consumer confidence index fell to 96.1 in November from an upwardly revised 106.2 in October and came in below the consensus of 98.0. Pantheon Macroeconomics warned that this was “likely not the bottom,” though forecast a rebound to take hold in spring.
Housing activity, however, continues to strengthen as home prices rose at the fastest pace in six years.
Tech also powered the broader market higher as the Fab 5 bounced back from weakness seen a day earlier.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) were higher.
In other news, Ambarella (NASDAQ:AMBA) reported third-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates, sending its shares up 15%.
