Thursday's early afternoon trade: J.P. Morgan-powered rally pushes S&P, Dow to new highs

The benchmark S&P 500 and the Dow scaled new highs yet again as J.P. Morgan's strong results on Thursday set an upbeat mood for earnings and spurred a rally in financial stocks. J.P. Morgan, the biggest US bank by assets and the first among its peers to issue results, reported a much better-than-expected rise in quarterly revenue. The bank's shares rose 2.1 percent, while the S&P financial index rose 0.91 percent, leading the advancers among the 10 major S&P sectors.
The materials index gained 0.85 percent, boosted by Monsanto's 3 percent increase after Bayer raised its offer for the seed company. "We saw a significant beat from J.P. Morgan and that's helping the psychology of the market," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities in New York. "With the weaker dollar helping commodities and better-than-expected economic data, the market is taking the path of least resistance with an upward bias."
At 12:34 pm ET (1634 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was up 127.1 points, or 0.69 percent, at 18,499.22, the S&P 500 was up 11.01 points, or 0.51 percent, at 2,163.44 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 27.55 points, or 0.55 percent, at 5,033.27. The S&P 500 hit 2,168.99, its fourth straight intraday record peak, while the Dow hit 18,537.57 to mark its third straight intraday record high.