Indexes Hit Records Despite Losses for Retailers

Stocks moved further into record territory on Wall Street on Thursday.

• The S&P 500 rose 20.46 points, or 0.3%, to 6,501.86, closing above 6,500 for the first time in its second record in a row.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 71.67 points, or 0.2%, to 45,636.90, eking out an all-time high of its own.
• The Nasdaq composite rose 1 15.02 points, or 0.5%, to 21,705.16.

The advances were driven largely by gains in huge tech companies including Broadcom, Alphabet, and Amazon, even as many stocks fell, the AP reports. Spam maker Hormel sank 13.1% after reporting earnings that fell short of Wall Street's forecasts and cutting its outlook for the year.

Broadcom rose 2.8%, Oracle was 1.9% higher, and Google parent Alphabet rose 2%. "We're seeing a continuation of a theme that has been in place really all year long, and that is communication services, information technology, really the areas that are surrounding this incredible capital expenditure cycle, have been the primary beneficiaries," says Bill Northey, senior investment director at US Bank Asset Management. Tech giant Nvidia was down 0.8% a day after reporting quarterly earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street analysts' forecasts, though the company noted that sales of its artificial intelligence chipsets rose at a slower pace than analysts anticipated.

Shares in several retailers were down following their latest quarterly results. Best Buy fell 3.7% after the consumer electronics chain's second-quarter snapshot was overshadowed by an outlook clouded due to the tariffs the US is imposing on trading partners. Despite also posting better-than-expected quarterly results, Urban Outfitters slid 10.7% after the retailer warned that it expects tariffs will increase pressure on its gross margins in the second half of the year. Dick's Sporting Goods fell 4.8% despite reporting second-quarter results that beat analysts' expectations. Burlington Stores bucked the trend. The retail chain climbed 5.4% after its latest earnings topped analysts' estimates.

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Traders also had their eye on new government reports on the job market and economy. The Labor Department reported that applications for unemployment benefits fell last week, the latest sign that employers are holding onto their workers even as the economy has slowed. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department reported that US gross domestic product— the nation's output of goods and services—grew at a 3.3% annual pace in the April-June quarter after shrinking 0.5% in the first three months of this year due to the fallout from the Trump administration's trade wars.