New record high for S amp P 500

The Standard and Poor (S&P) 500 hit a new record high in the US yesterday (March 6th).

This year has been a good one for the index so far and it has gone from strength to strength, closing at a record high at the end of the trading session.

Jobless claims were revealed to be at a three-month low, which proved to be an encouraging sign for the state of the US economic recovery and helped to push stocks higher. The jobs data was better than had been expected by analysts and painted a positive picture for the future of the US economy, which has recovered slowly from the global financial crash.

The S&P 500 only rose by 0.2 per cent over the course of the session, but this was enough to take the index to new ground and set a record high for the index. Elsewhere in the US, there was a 0.4 per cent rise for the Dow Jones and a 0.1 drop in the value of the Nasdaq for the day.

Resistant market

Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York, said: "We had a bit of a selloff in midday session and late afternoon, but the fact the S&P 500 managed to set another record shows how much resistance this market has to geopolitical overhang that is clearly not over, resistance to bad news."

Ongoing political upheaval in Ukraine appears to not have had an impact on the US market. The S&P has been breaking new ground on a regular basis in the last few days, with last night's new record high the fourth time it has broken fresh ground in the past six sessions, indicating the index might have some way to go before it reaches its peak.

The strength of the S&P is in sharp contrast to the Nikkei, which rose in value by more than 50 per cent over the course of last year but has fallen away in 2014 with a ten per cent drop in its value in the first two months of 2014.

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