S&P 500, Dow close at record highs on tech
S&P 500 hits record intraday high
Nvidia leads tech stocks, retail stocks edge up
Applied Therapeutics plummets after FDA declines drug approval
Updates to early market close
By Saeed Azhar, Johann M Cherian and Purvi Agarwal
Nov 29 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average notched record closing highs in a shortened Black Friday session, lifted by select technology stocks, while retail was in focus as the holiday shopping season kicked off.
Information technology stocks .SPLRCT including Nvidia NVDA.O helped boost the benchmark S&P 500, while the industrial and financial sectors lifted the blue-chip Dow.
Investors monitored shoppers' response todeep Black Friday discounts. Adobe Analytics estimated consumers would spend a record $10.8 billion in online purchases, up 9.9% from Black Friday last year.
Shares of Target TGT.N, Hasbro HAS.O and Macy's M.N rose.
The S&P 500 rose 0.56% to 6,032.44 points. The Nasdaq gained 0.83% to 19,218.17 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.42% at 44,910.65 points.
S&P 500 index breached its intraday record high of 6,025.42 set on Nov. 26.
"Retailers do a lot of importing. Inventory levels are very important to their profitability and ability to kind of control margins, so they will be one of the industries in the (tariffs) crossfire," said Ross Mayfield, investment strategist at Baird.
"But so far ... (things are) looking pretty solid for the Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale."
Chip stocks rebounded from Wednesday's declines, sending the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index .SOX higher.
The small-cap Russell 2000 index .RUT also rose as Treasury bond yields retreated further from multi-month highs.
Wall Street's main indexes closed lower on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq leading declines, as technology stocks slumped on Thanksgiving eve on worries the Federal Reserve may be cautious about rate cuts following stubbornly strong U.S. inflation data.
Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month, along with his Republican Party winning the majority in both houses of Congress, provided the latest boost to equities.
Investors were pricing in expectations that Trump's pro-business policies could spur economic growth and corporate profits. However, concerns prevailed that they could also stoke inflation, slow the pace of the Fed's rate cuts and weigh on global growth.
Traders expect the U.S. central bank tolower borrowing costs by 25 basis points at its December meeting, but see it pausing ratecuts in January, the CME Group's FedWatch showed.
Crypto stocks rose on the back of gains in bitcoinBTC=, boostingMicroStrategy <MSTR.O> and MARA Holdings MARA.O.
Applied Therapeutics APLT.O plunged after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declined to approve its drug for the treatment of a rare genetic metabolic disease.
Reporting by Saeed Azhar in Toronto and Johann M Cherian and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Richard Chang
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