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NEW YORK — U.S. stocks climbed Nov.
20 after market superstar Nvidia and another round of companies said they're making even fatter profits than expected. The S&P 500 pulled 0.53% higher Thursday, after flipping between modest gains and losses several times in the morning.
Banks, smaller companies and other areas of the stock market that tend do best when the economy is strong helped lead the way, while bitcoin briefly broke above $99,000. Crude oil, meanwhile, continued to rise. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 1.
06 percent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.03 percent. Nvidia's rise of 0.
5 percent was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward after yet again beating estimates for profit and revenue late Wednesday. It also gave a forecast for revenue in the current quarter that topped most expectations thanks to voracious demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology. Its stock initially sank in afterhours trading Wednesday following the release of the results.
Some investors said the market might have been looking for Nvidia's revenue forecast to surpass expectations by even more. But its stock recovered in premarket trading Thursday, and Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said it was another "flawless" profit report provided by Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang, whom Ives calls "the Godfather of AI." LOS ANGELES — Sales of previously occupied U.
S. homes rose in October, the first annual gain in more than three years, with home shoppers encouraged by easing rates and a pickup in properties on the market. Existing home sales rose 3.
4 percent last month, from September, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.96 million, the National Association of Realtors said Nov. 21.
That matches the annual pace set in July. Sales rose 2.9 percent compared with October last year, representing the first year-over-year gain since July 2021.
The latest home sales topped the 3.93 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet. Home prices increased on an annual basis for the 16th consecutive month.
The national median sales price rose 4 percent from a year earlier, to $407,200. "The worst of the downturn in home sales could be over, with increasing inventory leading to more transactions," said Lawrence Yun, the NAR's chief economist. NEW YORK — Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler, who was aggressive in his oversight of cryptocurrencies, will step down from his post on Jan.
20. Gensler pushed for changes that he said protected for investors, but the industry and many Republicans bristled at what they saw as overreach. President-elect Donald Trump had promised he would remove Gensler, who announced Nov.
21 that he would be stepping down from his post on inauguration day. Perhaps most famously, Gensler gave a speech during the first year of his chairmanship in 2021 where he described the world of crypto as "the Wild West." "This asset class is rife with fraud, scams, and abuse in certain applications," he said.
"There's a great deal of hype and spin about how crypto assets work. In many cases, investors aren't able to get rigorous, balanced, and complete information." The SEC under Gensler also helped to make bitcoin accessible to more investors.
LOS ANGELES — Oil company Phillips 66 has been federally indicted in connection with alleged violations of the Clean Water Act in California, authorities said Nov. 21. The Texas-based company is accused of discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater containing excessive amounts of oil and grease, the U.
S. Department of Justice said. The company allegedly dumped the wastewater from its Carson oil refinery into the Los Angeles County sewer system in 2020 and 2021 and did not report the violations, prosecutors said.
Phillips is charged with two counts of negligently violating the Clean Water Act and four counts of knowingly violating the law. The company faces up to five years of probation on each count and a maximum of $2.4 million in fines.
An arraignment date has not been set. The company did not respond to requests for comment Thursday..
CHARLOTTE — Truist Financial Corp. has announced that it is making loans available to North Carolina residents, businesses and local governments affected by Hurricane Helene. The Charlotte-based bank, formed by the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, said this week that it will lend more than $650 million and offer more in grants and investments over three years.
The initiative includes $340 million in lending for small businesses, home mortgages and commercial real estate and $310 million in low-cost, tax-exempt loans to municipalities for infrastructure. Another $50 million in loans or investments will come from a subsidiary, and $25 million in charitable grants will come from the bank's foundation. The funding will be available starting in December.
Helene brought widespread devastation to western North Carolina. NEW YORK — An Indian businessman who is one of the world's richest people has been indicted in the U.S.
on charges he duped investors by concealing that his company's huge solar energy project on the subcontinent was being facilitated by an alleged bribery scheme. Gautam Adani was charged in a federal indictment unsealed Nov. 20 with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.
The case involves a lucrative arrangement for Adani Green Energy and another firm to sell solar power to the Indian government. The indictment paints Adani and his co-defendants as playing two sides of the deal. It accuses them of portraying it as rosy and above-board to Wall Street investors who poured several billion dollars into the project over the last five years while, in India, they were allegedly paying or planning to pay about $265 million in bribes to officials to help secure billions of dollars in contracts and financing.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the defendants "orchestrated an elaborate scheme" and sought to "enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of our financial markets.
" Adani's company in India had no immediate comment, as meanwhile shares in the Adani corporate empire plunged Thursday in India. WASHINGTON — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell again last week, remaining near seven-month lows. The Labor Department reported Nov.
21 that jobless claim applications fell by 6,000 to 213,000 for the week of Nov. 16. That's fewer than the 220,000 analysts forecast.
Continuing claims, representing the total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits, rose by 36,000 to 1.91 million for the week of Nov. 9.
That was higher than expected and the most in three years. While the number of new applicants remains at historically healthy levels, some who are receiving benefits are finding it harder to land new jobs. That suggests that demand for workers is waning, even as the economy remains strong.
The four-week average of weekly claims, which quiets some of the weekly volatility, fell by 3,750 to 217,750..
