Masters of the Universe Rejoice: Netflix and Big Tech Lead Stock To Record Highs on Inauguration Day

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Stocks hit record highs Wednesday as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite rose to new intraday record highs as investors binged on digital media stocks. Netflix, which announced better-than-expected quarterly results on Wednesday, saw its shares jumped by more than 16 percent.

The Dow rose by more than 240 points, or around eight-tenths of a percentage point. The leading blue-chip stocks including Apple, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

Nine of the 11 sectors of the S&P 500 were up, led by telecommunications services-—which includes Netflix, Google, and Facebook—and information technology.   The consumer staples sector was flat. Financials were down, with Goldman Sachs losing 1.69 percent and J.P. Morgan Chase shares dropping 1.56 percent.

After Netflix, the biggest gainers on the Nasdaq were Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon.

Investors also piled into car stocks. Ford shares rose 6.94 percent. Carmax shares climbed 6.44 percent.

Shares of homebuilders Pultegroup, Lennar, and DR Horton rose by more than 6.3 percent.

The worst performing S&P stock was Bank of New York Mellon, whose shares fell 7.4 percent.  Shares of US Bancorp fell 5.7 percent and shares of State Street were off by 2.6 percent.

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