By Sin\u00e9ad Carew and Avinash P <\/p>\n
Aug 19 (Reuters) – The main U.S. stock market indexes closed modestly higher on Wednesday, as easing government bond yields boosted risk appetites while a dramatic rally in shares of vaccine-maker Moderna drove gains in the healthcare sector. <\/p>\n
Investors barely reacted to minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s July \u200cmeeting, which showed deepening concern about inflation with “several” policymakers ready to raise interest rates. “Many” said a rate hike would be needed if inflation does not decline \u200cto the U.S. central bank’s 2% target. <\/p>\n
But a day after the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond hit its highest level since 2007, the yield fell on Wednesday along with the 10-year Treasury yield. The moves came after \u200bthe U.S. Treasury announced it would double the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated bonds. <\/p>\n
“The risk-on trade is trying to hang on to the lifeline that Treasury Secretary Bessent sent,” said Carol Schleif, chief market strategist at BMO Private Wealth, noting that riskier assets including high-profile technology stocks had sold off in recent days as bond yields rose. <\/p>\n
Concerns over ballooning government debt and rising inflation had pushed global bond yields to multi-decade highs on Tuesday. Schleif said investors were relieved by the government support as higher rates “could potentially impact the AI trade” as technology \u200ccompanies have been issuing debt and equity and using their own \u2060cash to fund construction of data centers supporting AI. <\/p>\n
However, equity indexes pared gains as the session wore on. Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors, said investors likely took some profits after the initial rally and he added that the morning’s announcement “doesn’t mean that the \u2060longer-term issue of higher rates is off the table.” <\/p>\n
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 119.65 points, or 0.22%, to 53,463.05, the S&P 500 gained 16.22 points, or 0.21%, to 7,707.98 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 41.38 points, or 0.16%, to 26,331.09. <\/p>\n
Moderna’s shares surged almost 177%, leading S&P 500 gainers in a record rally for the company after it announced that its personalized mRNA cancer therapy developed with Merck cut the risk \u200bof \u200bmelanoma recurrence and spread in a late-stage trial. Merck shares jumped 12.6% and it was the biggest \u200bpercentage gainer in the blue-chip Dow and the third-biggest in the S&P \u200c500. <\/p>\n
Moderna’s blistering rally boosted healthcare peers such as Novavax , which finished up 10.8%, and U.S.-listed shares of BioNTech, which vaulted 22%. <\/p>\n
The S&P 500 healthcare sector closed up 3.5%, marking its biggest one-day percentage gain since April 2025. The sector also hit a record high and provided the biggest boost to the S&P 500 from any of its 11 major industry sectors. The Nasdaq biotechnology index also jumped 6.4%. <\/p>\n
The second-biggest sector gainer was consumer discretionary, which added 2%. <\/p>\n
The S&P 500 industrials index led percentage losses among the benchmark’s industry indexes with a 0.9% decline. The S&P 500 information technology index was the next-biggest loser, down 0.7%, with pressure from chip stocks. <\/p>\n
However, Marvell Technologies shares jumped 9.9% after it said it will help develop Google’s in-demand \u200ccustom chips and has offered the search giant the right to buy a potential $12.2 billion stake. <\/p>\n
Marvell was \u200bone of the few gainers in the volatile Philadelphia semiconductor index, which ended down 2%. Google parent Alphabet’s \u200bshares finished up 0.2%. <\/p>\n
On the earnings front, Target shares rose 4.3% after the retailer \u200braised its annual sales forecast. Lowe’s shares gained 2% even after it trimmed its annual sales growth forecast. <\/p>\n
Est\u00e9e Lauder shares jumped 16.3%, making it \u200cthe S&P 500’s second-biggest percentage gainer, after the cosmetics maker forecast \u200bannual profit above Wall Street estimates. <\/p>\n
Brent crude futures \u200bsettled higher with Middle East progress still unclear. U.S. President Donald Trump said no talks were taking place with Iran and insisted the Strait of Hormuz was open, contradicting Iran’s assertion that the strait remained shut to shipping. <\/p>\n
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1.9-to-1 ratio on the NYSE, where there were 263 new highs and 93 new lows. On \u200bthe Nasdaq, 2,855 stocks rose and 1,967 fell as advancing issues \u200coutnumbered decliners by a 1.45-to-1 ratio. <\/p>\n
The S&P 500 posted 18 new 52-week highs and no new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 106 new highs and \u200b89 new lows. <\/p>\n
On U.S. exchanges 16.92 billion shares changed hands compared with the 16.96 billion moving average for the last 20 sessions. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sin\u00e9ad Carew in New \u200bYork, Avinash P and Purvi Agawal in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and David Gregorio) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sin\u00e9ad Carew and Avinash P Aug 19 (Reuters) – The main U.S. stock market indexes closed modestly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2195,266889,163,521,11421,85,46,17745,12522],"class_list":["post-589942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-bond-yields","tag-carol-schleif","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-healthcare-sector","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-treasury","tag-u-s-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}