Investing.com – Late buying pushed the S&P 500 and other indexes to new intraday and closing highs Tuesday before Wall Street starts to depart for the Thanksgiving holiday.
The S&P 500 was up 0.22%. The Dow Jones industrials added 0.20% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.18%.
Helping the market was a comment from President Donald Trump saying a phase one trade agreement with China was close, though he didn't say how close.
Meanwhile, Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) and Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE:DKS) hit 52-week highs after reporting better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. Best Bluy was the S&P 500's leading stocks on the day. Plus, Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) rose 1.3% after a report its Disney+ streaming service was getting a million new subscriber signups a day.
Also hitting new highs were Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Allstate (NYSE:ALL) and Ross Stores (NASDAQ:ROST).
A big loser was Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR), suffering because tariffs on Chinese imports were squeezing profits. Shares fell 15.2%, the biggest decliner among stocks in the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 Index.
Adding some additional cheer was the Commerce Department's new home sales report, which showed October sales down 0.7% but September sales revised up to 738,000 units, the highest level since July 2007 – just before the financial crisis hit.
Homebuilder shares moved higher as well, led by NVR (NYSE:NVR) and luxury builder Hovnanian (NYSE:HOV).
The report also boosted shares of Home Depot (NYSE:HD), Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW) and Sherwin-Williams (NYSE:SHW).
Real estate was the strongest of the 11 sectors of the S&P 500, followed by consumer staples and consumer discretionary stocks. Energy, financial and healthcare stocks were the weakest sectors.
Gold rose modestly. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 40 cents to $58.41 a barrel. Brent Oil Futures crude for February delivery rose 59 cents to $63.21. OPEC meets next week.
Interest rates were lower with the 10-Year Treasury yield falling to 1.738% from Monday's 1.764%.
Trading may have softened a bit in the afternoon as people began to leave for the long Thanksgiving weekend. A full day of trading is set for Wednesday, followed by a market close on Thursday and a half-day scheduled for Friday.
Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), Under Armour (NYSE:UA), restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) (NYSE:CMG) and Abiomed (NASDAQ:ABMD), which makes medical implants and other devices, were the top-performing S&P 500 stocks on the day.
Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE), oil-and-gas producer Cimarex Energy (NYSE:XEC) and oil-and-gas driller Helmerich and Payne (NYSE:HP) were the weakest S&P 500 performers.