Big Tech continues to steamroll through the pandemic, and strong gains for some of the market’s most influential companies on Friday helped Wall Street close out its fourth straight winning month.
The S&P 500 rose 0.8% following blowout profit reports from Apple and several other tech titans. The gains didn’t come easily, though, and the stock market flipped up and down through the day amid worries about the economy and whether Congress can find agreement on more aid for it.
Other markets continued to show caution, with the 10-year Treasury yield touching its lowest level since March and gold rising again.
On Friday:
The S&P 500 rose 24.90 points, or 0.8%, to 3,271.12.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 114.67, or 0.4%, at 26,428.32.
The Nasdaq composite jumped 157.64, or 1.5%, to 10,745.27.
The Russell 2000 index of small company stocks fell 14.67, or 1%, to 1,480.43.
For the week:
The S&P 500 is up 55.49 points, or 1.7%.
The Dow is down 41.57 points, or 0.2%.
The Nasdaq is up 382.10 points, or 3.7%
The Russell 2000 is up 12.87 points, or 0.9%.
For the year:
The S&P 500 is up 40.34 points, or 1.2%.
The Dow is down 2,110.12 points, or 7.4%.
The Nasdaq is up 1,772.67 points, or 19.8%.
The Russell 2000 is down 188.04 points, or 11.3%.
15 Healthcare Stocks that Analysts Love
There are more than 200 healthcare companies traded on public markets. Given the sheer number of pharmaceutical companies, medical research firms, hospital systems and other healthcare stocks, it can be hard to identify which healthcare companies are going to outperform the market.
Fortunately, Wall Street's brightest minds have already done this for us. Every year, analyst issue approximately 3,000 distinct recommendations for healthcare companies. Analysts don't always get their "buy" ratings right, but it's worth taking a hard look when several analysts from different brokerages and research firm are giving "strong buy" and "buy" ratings to the same healthcare stock.
This slide show lists the 15 healthcare companies that have the highest average analyst recommendations from Wall Street's equities research analysts over the last 12 months.
View the "15 Healthcare Stocks that Analysts Love".
