NEW YORK: Encouraging earnings from Cisco and hopeful signs in a housing report lifted the stock market Thursday. The gains nudged the Standard & Poor’s 500 index near the four-year high it reached earlier this year.
Cisco Systems, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment, led the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones industrial average, surging 10 percent to $19.02.
The report helped push the S&P and Dow near their highest closing levels since 2007.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 9.98 points to close at 1,415.51, less than four points shy of its April 2 high. The Dow rose 85.33 points to 13,250.11, an increase of 0.6 percent and 29 points away from its May 1 peak of 13,279.
In other trading, the Nasdaq composite index rose 31.46 points to 3,062.39.
Facebook fell 6 percent on the first day that its early investors and a handful of founders were free to sell their stock. In all, 271 million shares can be sold, according to Facebook’s regulatory filings. The social networking company lost $1.33 to $19.87.
The S&P 500 has rallied more than 5 percent in the last three weeks.
