While you were sleeping: UPDATED Wall St rally pushes Nasdaq to intraday record

Stocks on Wall Street rose in a broad but modest rally, pushing the Nasdaq to a record high amid better-than-expected earnings such as for Best Buy and strong new home sales.

Meanwhile, an easing in manufacturing bolstered hope the US Federal Reserve might not raise interest rates.

Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen is scheduled to speak on Friday at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference of central bankers and her comments are eagerly awaited in terms of fresh clues on the timing of a US rate hike.

“What worries me is the complacency on rates,” Mark Spellman, portfolio manager at Alpine Funds, told the Wall Street Journal. “If people are wrong on rates and they start going up, the market is too high – but there’s not a lot of evidence rates will go up a lot,"

At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 17.88 points, or 0.1%, to 18.547.30 while the Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.3% to 5260.08 after touching a record high 5275.74 during the session. 

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 0.2% to 2186.90.

"The earnings season is largely over and the only thing we can look at is Fed-speak which is agonising," Brian Frank, portfolio manager at Key Biscayne, Florida-based Frank Capital Partners, told Bloomberg. 

Dip-buying market
"We're in the most aggressive dip-buying market I've ever seen. I wouldn't even call the last two days a dip but any tiny decline seems to be an excuse to buy and talk about the Fed."

Shares of Best Buy soared 20% after the electronics goods retailer reported quarterly earnings that exceeded estimates, underpinning optimism about a turnaround.

There were disappointments, too. Shares of JM Smucker dropped after it downgraded its full-year sales estimate because of weakness in its new pet foods division, acquired last year.

Net sales, excluding one-off items, are expected to range from flat to down 1% this year, the company said in a statement. It previously had predicted a 1% increase.

Shares of Smucker sank 12.6%, the biggest loss in the S&P 500.

Monsanto-Bayer deal closer
Shares of Monsanto rose. Negotiations between Bayer and Monsanto are advancing toward a deal after the companies made progress on issues including the purchase price and termination fee, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Shares of Monsanto climbed 3.2%, while those of Bayer gained closed 0.7% higher in Frankfurt.

The latest US housing data offered reason for optimism.

A Commerce Department report showed new home sales climbed 12.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 654,000 units in July, the highest level in almost nine years.

"This marginally raises our near-term outlook for the housing market, as tightness in the new home market suggests further impetus to new construction ahead," Andrew Hollenhorst, an economist at Citigroup in New York, told Reuters.

US crude oil rose 1.5% to $US48.10 a barrel after falling earlier in the session. Hopes for a production agreement next month are fading, analysts said, calling a recent rally in the oil price into question.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index finished the day with a 0.9% advance from the previous close. The UK's FTSE 100 index increased 0.6%, France's CAC 40 index rose 0.7%, while Germany's DAX index climbed 0.9%.

(BusinessDesk)

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