NEW YORK: The Dow and S&P 500 rose slightly on Wednesday, registering a third straight session of gains, with Alphabet Inc's shares hitting a record high following its strong quarterly results.
Alphabet shares ended up 7.3% and provided the biggest boost to the S&P 500. The Google parent late Tuesday posted results that topped quarterly sales expectations for its advertising and Cloud businesses, helped in part by the pandemic.
With recent stronger-than-expected results from Alphabet and other companies, S&P 500 companies are now on track to post earnings growth for the fourth quarter of 2020 and to defy expectations for another quarterly profit drop due to the pandemic, based on data from Refinitiv Wednesday.
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