Wall Street Close: Bulls back in town, S&P 500 tests all time closing highs

US benchmarks ended higher on Wednesday, buoyed by the US inflation data, advances in the Big-5 techs and despite the deadlock in Congress.

The S&P 500 was the head-turner as it flirted with new highs, trading to 3,387.89 in the last hour of the session, ending just below the all-time closing high having breached it earlier in the day.

The Nasdaq and Dow also rose sharply. The Nasdaq was the first of the three major indexes to bounce back to an all-time high in June. The Dow remains below its February peak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 289.93 points, or 1.05%, to 27,976.84, the S&P 500 SPX gained 46.66 points, or 1.40%, to 3,380.35 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 229.42 points, or 2.13%, to 11,012.24.

Tesla Inc TSLA shares jumped 13.1%, in one of the biggest boosts to the Nasdaq, after it announced a five-for-one stock split in an attempt to make its shares more accessible to employees and investors.

The Big-5. Apple AAPL, Microsoft MSFT, Amazon.com AMZN, Alphabet GOOG and Facebook FB accounted for 40% of the S&P 500's near 47 point rise.

US CPI beats expectations

Prices trended up in the US in July with the headline CPI up 0.6% m/m – twice the rise expected.

Core CPI also rose 0.6%, its largest rise in nearly 30 years. Clothing prices lifted 1.1% while used cars gained 2.3% and fuel prices shot up 5.6%. This data and the PPI released a day earlier were both stronger than expected but with the virus still raging in the US it may be some time before there is a sustained improvement in economic activity,

analysts at ANZ Bank explained.

SP500 levels