Stock Market Today: S&P 500 Hits New High as Micron Soars

Stocks opened solidly higher Thursday thanks to a round of encouraging economic data and strong earnings from memory chipmaker Micron Technology (MU). And while the major indexes lost steam as the session wore on, one of the benchmarks managed to end at a new record close.  

Investors had plenty of headlines to sift through today. On the economic front, the final reading on second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) showed the economy grew at an annual rate of 3% over the three-month period, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

"Real GDP has grown between 2.8% and 3.2% in year-over-year terms for five consecutive quarters," says Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica. "The last five quarters mark the longest stretch of growth this fast since 2006."

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Separate data from the Census Bureau indicated new orders for durable goods edged up slightly in August, following July's upwardly revised 9.9% increase. Still, this was better than the 3% decline economists were anticipating.

"The bottom line is that business investment should again contribute materially to real GDP growth in the third quarter, suggesting just minimal slowing from the unrevised 3.0% pace of the second quarter," says Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. 

Powell mum on rate cuts in early morning remarks

Meanwhile, an early morning appearance from Fed Chair Jerome Powell failed to give additional color to the central bank's future rate-cut plans. Rather, in pre-recorded remarks for the 10th Annual U.S. Treasury Market Conference, Powell briefly discussed the 2014 "flash crash" in the U.S. Treasury market.

"That 'flash crash' was a wakeup call because we had never seen such a large swing in Treasury prices in such a short period of time," Powell said. "The Interagency Working Group report helped us understand how much the structure of the Treasury market had changed and how large a role high-speed, electronic trading firms were playing in it."

Micron pops on solid earnings

In single-stock news, Micron stock surged 14.7% after the memory chipmaker beat top- and bottom-line expectations for its fiscal fourth quarter and provided a better-than-expected outlook for its fiscal first quarter.

Shares are now up 60% for the year to date and analysts overwhelmingly agree that MU is a Strong Buy stock. "Long term, we view MU as a key beneficiary of strong data center demand – both artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) – automotive semi content, graphic, and industrial automation," says Needham analyst Quinn Bolton, who has a Buy rating on Micron.

Southwest flies high on upbeat outlook, stock buybacks

Elsewhere, Southwest Airlines (LUV) stock soared 5.4% after the air carrier raised its third-quarter revenue-per-available-seat-mile (RASM) outlook and authorized a new $2.5 billion share repurchase program. The company also unveiled a number of new initiatives as part of its three-year transformation plan during its investor day.

Still, Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu maintains an Underperform (Sell) rating on LUV. "Near-term challenges from the network positioning, industry oversupply, and slower-than-expected learnings on the revenue management system work against LUV in tandem with the risks posed by premium seat adoption and the incremental capital expenditures that go with it," Kahyaoglu says.

McDonald's unveils 48th straight dividend hike

McDonald's (MCD) stock also finished on the positive side of the ledger, rising 1.1% after the fast-food giant announced a 6% increase to its quarterly dividend. This marks the 48th straight year the company has raised its dividend.

Why does this matter? "Shares in companies that raise their payouts like clockwork decade after decade can produce superior total returns (price change plus dividends) over the long run, even if they sport apparently ho-hum yields to begin with," writes Dan Burrows, senior investing writer at Kiplinger, in his feature "Best Dividend Stocks to Buy for Dependable Dividend Growth."

For MCD, this dividend growth has resulted in a five-year total return (price change plus dividends) of nearly 59%. Compare that to the Dow Jones stock's slimmer gain of 43% on just a price basis alone.

As for the main indexes, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 5,745 – a new record closing high – the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6% to 42,175, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.6% to 18,190.

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