Wall St inches up with financials energy

Reuters

By Caroline Valetkevitch

Oct 16 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks edged higher on Monday as financial shares recovered from last week's losses and higher oil prices lifted energy shares.

JPMorgan, up 2.1 percent, and Bank of America, up 1.8 percent, led gains in bank stocks, tracking a climb in U.S. Treasury yields, which benefits banks. The S&P financial index was up 0.5 percent.

Apple shares rose 1.6 percent following a bullish brokerage call on the iPhone maker.

The S&P energy index was up 0.2 percent, helped by a 0.8 percent rise in U.S. crude oil.

With the S&P already up 14 percent so far this year, investors are looking to justify the relatively high valuation of stocks through the earnings.

"There aren't many earnings out there so people are kind of pausing and waiting to see what happens in the next few weeks," said Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 58.78 points, or 0.26 percent, to 22,930.5, the S&P 500 gained 2.33 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,555.5 and the Nasdaq Composite added 10.35 points, or 0.16 percent, to 6,616.15.

The Senate is trying this week to pass a partisan budget blueprint that would help guide federal spending.

The Republicans want to use the "budget resolution" to pave the way for the party later this year or next year to pass a major tax-cut bill without any Democratic support.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Republicans and Democrats in Congress are working on a short-term fix for healthcare insurance markets after he last week scrapped subsidies to insurers.

Healthcare stocks were the biggest laggard, falling 0.5 percent.

Video-streaming pioneer Netflix was up 0.8 percent ahead of its quarterly results due after the close.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.08-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.30-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

Referenced Symbols:AAPL,

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