by Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The New York Stock Exchange ended in mixed order on Tuesday, with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 benefiting from the good performances of Walmart and Home Depot, while the decline in technology stocks penalized the Nasdaq.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.71%, or 239.57 points, to 34,152.01 points.
The broader S&P-500 gained 8.06 points, or 0.19%, to 4,305.2 points.
The Nasdaq Composite fell for its part by 25.5 points (-0.19%) to 13,102.55 points.
Home Depot reported better-than-expected quarterly sales on Tuesday, and Walmart said it expects a smaller drop in annual profit than it had forecast last month.
Yields on ten-year US government bonds rose, weighing on the technology sector and other high-growth stocks.
After struggling for most of the first half of the year, the market has rebounded since mid-June, helped in part by better-than-expected earnings from US companies.
Investors were also hopeful that aggressive rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) could be muted if there was an impact on economic growth.
“When you’re going from a bear market to a bull market, especially when the Fed is raising rates and consumers are worried, you really want consumer discretionary to be buoyed by enthusiasm. And the current move discretionary values is positive for the market,” Quincy Krosby, equity strategist at LPL Financial.
Investor sentiment is still bearish, but more in an “apocalyptic” way, according to BofA’s monthly survey of global fund managers released on Tuesday.
* The reminder of the session in Europe: [.EUFR]
(With contributions from Bansari Mayur Kamdar, Susan Mathew and Anisha Sircar; French version Camille Raynaud)