Business Briefly: Wall Street’s Rally Returns

Wall Street's rally returns

Wall Street's rally got back on track Wednesday after more gains for big technology stocks helped pull the S&P 500 to its sixth gain in seven days.

The S&P 500 drifted up and down for most of the day before a last-hour lift sent it to a gain of 0.8%. Treasury yields and oil prices also ticked higher, but caution continued to hang over markets as gold touched its highest price since 2011.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 177.10 points, or 0.7%, to 26,067.28, and the Nasdaq composite gained 148.61, or 1.4%, to 10,492.50 to set another record. The S&P 500, which more index funds benchmark themselves against, rose 24.62 to 3,169.94 and is back within 6.4% of its record.

Amazon added 2.7%, Apple rose 2.3% and Microsoft gained 2.2%. Because of their immense size, those three stocks alone were responsible for more than half the S&P 500's gain for the day.

"The Nasdaq is screaming warning signs that there's rampant speculation," said Andrew Slimmon, senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, after expectations have built so high.

"I would be very cautious on some of these companies," he said. "The worst thing in the world is to own companies that have just gone hyperbolic."

Roughly 2 in 5 stocks in the S&P 500 fell Wednesday, with several chemical and construction-related companies taking the hardest hits.

The mixed trading followed Tuesday's snapback, when the S&P 500 fell 1.1% to break a five-day winning streak. The selling accelerated late in the day, and analysts say investors were likely cashing in on recent gains, given the uncertainty that lies ahead for markets.

Expectations for the upcoming earnings season are dismal. More important for investors, analysts say, may be what companies say about how they plan to navigate the rest of the year and even 2021, when profits are expected to grow again.

Gold for delivery in July rose $11.30 to settle at $1,815.50 per ounce. The more actively traded contract for August delivery neared $1,830 during the day, the highest level since September 2011.

Treasury yields ticked higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 0.65% from 0.64%. It tends to move with investors' expectations for the economy and inflation.

Benchmark U.S. crude rose 28 cents to settle at $40.90 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 21 cents to $43.29 a barrel.

Facebook audit finds setbacks amid civil rights progress

A two-year audit of Facebook's civil rights record found "serious setbacks" that have marred the social network's progress on matters such as hate speech, misinformation and bias.

Facebook hired the audit's leader, former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy, in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues. Its 100-page report released Wednesday outlines a "seesaw of progress and setbacks" at the company on everything from bias in Facebook's algorithms to its content moderation, advertising practices and treatment of voter suppression.

The audit recommends that Facebook build a "civil rights infrastructure" into every aspect of the company, as well as a "stronger interpretation" of existing voter suppression policies and more concrete action on algorithmic bias. Those suggestions are not binding, and there is no formal system in place to hold Facebook accountable for any of the audit's findings.

"While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights," the audit report states.

Those include Facebook's decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking, even when President Donald Trump posted false information about voting by mail. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cited a commitment to free speech as a reason for allowing such posts to remain on the platform, even though the company has rules in place against voter suppression it could have used to take down - or at least add warning labels to - Trump's posts.

Civil rights leaders who met virtually with Zuckerberg and other Facebook leaders Tuesday expressed skepticism that recommendations from the audit would ever be implemented, noting that past suggestions in previous reports had gone overlooked.

"What we get is recommendations that they end up not implementing," said Rashad Robinson, the president of Color for Change, one of several civil rights nonprofits leading an organized boycott of Facebook advertising.

Compiled from Associated Press reports.