Investing.com — The S&P 500 closed higher Tuesday in thin trading ahead of the Christmas holiday, as tech stocks continued their strong start to the week.
At 1:00 p.m. ET (18:00 GMT), both S&P 500 rose 1.1%, the Nasdaq 100 added 1.4%, while Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.9%, or 350 points.
The New York Stock Exchange is set to close early Tuesday for Christmas Eve, and the market is shut on Christmas Day.
Tech adds to strong week
Tech added to its strong start to the week as the so-called Mag 7 including Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) and Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) climbed, though NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) traded flat.
Chip stocks, which racked up stocks gains a day earlier, were marginally higher Biden after the Biden administration launched a new trade investigation into Chinese-made legacy chips, which could elad to fresh tariffs on Chinese semiconductors.
American Airlines recovers after briefly halting flights
American Airlines Group (NASDAQ:AAL) shares were flat recovering intraday loss Tuesday as the airline briefly grounded all flights in the U.S. due to a “technical issue.” The ground stop was later lifted.
Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) slipped, halting its recovery from a recent plunge that was triggered by results from a late-stage study of its weight loss drug that fell of expectations.
Clients continue to buy US equities – BofA
BofA Securities stated its clients continued to buy US equities for the seventh straight week. Specifically, inflows reached $10 billion – the second-largest amount since 2008 and the biggest since January 2017.
Similar to recent weeks, purchases were spread across both individual stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with stronger inflows directed toward single stocks. Large-cap stocks saw the bulk of the buying activity, while small caps experienced more subdued inflows.
Institutional and retail investors increased their equity holdings for another week – the third for institutions and the second for retail clients. In contrast, hedge funds were net sellers for the second consecutive week.
The rolling four-week average of inflows from institutional clients hit its highest point in nine months, reflecting a typical pattern of renewed buying activity following October’s tax-loss selling by mutual funds.
“Private clients typically are big sellers in December amid tax loss selling vs. big net buyers in January. While this group has been a buyer of ETFs this month, it has sold single stocks, though slightly less so than in the average December,” BofA strategists led by Jill Carey Hall noted.
(Peter Nurse, Ayushman Ojha contributed to this article.)