Dow jumps 500 points to new 2023 high Thursday, capping 8% November rally: Live updates

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied Thursday to a new high for the year, as more cooling inflation data and strong Salesforce earnings capped the benchmark’s best month since October 2022.

The 30-stock Dow gained 519 points, or 1.5% to about 35,950, surpassing its previous high for the year in August. The S&P 500 added 0.4% and the Nasdaq Composite was about 0.2% lower as investors took some profits in Big Tech stocks that have led the November comeback.

The Dow is closing out November with more than an 8.8% gain, on pace to break a three-month losing streak. The S&P 500 is also up more than 8% in November, while the Nasdaq has advanced roughly 10%. Both averages are tracking for their best monthly performance since July 2022. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were trading about 1% away from their respective 2023 highs.

“A lot of what we’ve seen in November is just a realization that the economy is still doing well, that consumers are resilient and the Fed is on hold, more than anything else,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance. “Assuming those conditions stay between now and the end of the year—which is our our most likely scenario—we think the market will continue to drift higher.”

“For 2022, we spent so much time thinking about what could go wrong, and we really didn’t spend any time thinking about what could go right. 2023 is a story of a lot of things going right, ” Zaccarelli added.

Leading the Dow higher on Thursday is cloud software company Salesforce, which popped 8.6% on the back of better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the fiscal third quarter. Salesforce’s cloud data business, which saw its revenue increase by 22% from the previous year, and its artificial intelligence product Einstein GPT were behind the positive report. Healthcare companies UnitedHealth Group, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Amgen also led the index higher.

Data released early Thursday showed that the personal consumption expenditures price index—the Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation gauge—rose 3.5% on a year-over-year basis, a slowing from a 3.7% annual gain in prior month.

These numbers were the latest in a string of positive inflation data seen in November that caused traders to conclude the Federal Reserve is likely done raising rates and could even begin lowering them in 2024.

“What’s driving the market, ultimately, is that shift in monetary policy,” said Sonu Varghese, global macro strategist at Carson Group. “Lower volatility could also push more money into markets as people regrow their portfolios and increase exposure to equities. We think new highs are definitely possible.”

The 10-year Treasury yield, which had spooked investors by rising above 5% last month, collapsed this month as the cooling inflation data rolled out, helping to boost sentiment for equities. The 10-year yield was recently more than 9 basis points higher at 4.363%.

Technology shares were far and away the big winners in November, but investors were taking some of those bets off the table as the month came to a close.

Nvidia shed more than 2.9% Thursday, but is still up 14.7% for the month. Tesla shares were off by 2.1% Thursday following a roughly 19% comeback in November. Alphabet and Meta each lost 2.3%.