A strong showing by credit card companies and positive economic news helped to push the Dow Jones Industrial Average to within almost 150 points of its all-time high on Thursday.
The Dow Jones jumped 221 points, or 1.3%, to close at 17,196. The index rode a strong earnings report from Visa (V), whose shares gained 10.2% and accounted for about 22 points of the Dow’s rally. Another credit card company, Mastercard (MA), also had a strong day on the market, rising 9.4% after releasing its own strong quarterly earnings.
Investors were also buoyed by positive news from the Commerce Department, which reported Thursday that gross domestic product grew at a better-than-expected 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter.
The Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 both rose slightly on Thursday – 0.4% and 0.6%, respectively.
The Dow Jones has had a volatile past month since it hit more than 17,350 points, an all-time intraday high, on September 19, which came a little more than two months after the blue-chip index crossed the 17,000-point mark for the first time. However, earlier this month, a series of market-wide sell-offs, including a one-day loss of 335 points for the Dow Jones, erased much of the market’s gains for the year.
Last week, the major indices had a several strong days that helped the Dow Jones, Nasdaq and S&P 500, all finish ahead for the week. This week, the Dow is up more than 2% while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are each up about 1.5%.