Wall Street's rally gets back on track as tech leads the way

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s rally got back on track Wednesday after more gains for big technology stocks helped pull the S&P 500 to its sixth gain in seven days.

The S&P 500 drifted up and down for most of the day, before a last-hour lift sent it to a gain of 0.8%. Treasury yields and oil prices also ticked higher, but caution continued to hang over markets as gold touched its highest price since 2011.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 177.10 points, or 0.7%, to 26,067.28, and the Nasdaq composite gained 148.61, or 1.4%, to 10,492.50 to set another record. The S&P 500, which more index funds benchmark themselves against, rose 24.62 to 3,169.94 and is back within 6.4% of its record.

Wednesday’s up-and-down trading was reminiscent of the market’s moves over the last month, when Wall Street has largely churned in place. Optimism is rising about a reopening economy, but worsening coronavirus infection levels across much of the U.S. South and West threaten to derail the budding economic improvements.

Several very early indicators on the economy may also be flashing yellow, such as dine-in reservations at restaurants and airport traffic, as some states roll back their reopenings, said Katie Nixon, chief investment officer at Northern Trust Wealth Management.

That could be driving investors back into the comfort of the stocks that have served them so well for years: big tech-oriented stocks. Such stocks have continued to climb as investors bet they’ll be able to grow almost regardless of what the economy is doing.

Amazon added 2.7%, Apple rose 2.3% and Microsoft gained 2.2%. Because of their immense size, those three stocks alone were responsible for more than half the S&P 500’s gain for the day.

“It’s sort of like: Buy what feels safe,...