.The Nasdaq Composite gained 0.3% to 2671. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index added 0.3% to 1262.
Market moves are expected to be muted for the rest of the week as investors look to lock in the year's gains. Volume has been light thanks to holiday vacations and a deluge of snow in the Northeast.
The Dow is up about 11% for 2010, while the S&P 500 is up nearly 13% and the Nasdaq is up nearly 18%. Small-cap stocks have surged even more, with the Russell 2000 up more than 26%. Almost all those gains have come in the second half of the year, with the Dow up 7.5% in the fourth quarter alone. Trading for the year wraps up on Friday.
Traders said after the volatility of this spring, the market's year-end returns were surprisingly good.
"It's the stealth rally—at the end of the day, the markets had quite a good year," said Mitch Rubin, chief investment officer at RiverPark Advisors. The spring slump and the May 6 "flash crash" added volatility but didn't undercut the indexes severely, he said.
Energy and materials stocks were two of the best performers Wednesday. Halliburton rose 2%, Schlumberger gained 2.1%, and Occidental Petroleum advanced 1.8%. Monsanto gained 3.2%.
Sears Holdings soared 6.2% to lead consumer-discretionary stocks, one of the strongest sectors of the day, building on gains made this week after it began promoting a new movie-download service.
The consumer-discretionary sector rose 0.5% on Wednesday and has risen 26% this year to lead the S&P's 10 sectors. Even with the sector's surprising strength, some investors were cautious about reading it as a sign of economic recovery, particularly after a recent dose of sobering housing and consumer confidence data.
."Consumption is going to be a big disappointment" in the new year, said Mark Tepper, managing partner of Strategic Wealth Partners. "There's still a real estate crisis—that's still a complete and total mess."
The government keeps issuing new debt, as more data about the holiday shopping season come out. Deborah Lynn Blumberg, John Shipman and George Stahl report.
.Shares of GenVec jumped 5.8% after the biopharmaceutical company said it will be working with Sanofi-Aventis' animal-health unit Merial to commercialize GenVec's vaccine technology for treatment of foot-and-mouth disease.
Savient Pharmaceuticals shed 2.1% after its board started a search for a chief executive, a role the company left vacant since late 2008 when Christopher G. Clement resigned in an "involuntary termination by the company without cause," according to a regulatory filing at the time.
Treasury prices rose, pushing the yield on the 10-year note down to 3.35%. Yields move inversely to prices.
Crude-oil futures prices fell 0.4%, while gold futures climbed.
By KRISTINA PETERSON And JONATHAN CHENG
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@dowjones.com
The Wall Street Journal
