NEW YORK — Encouraging news from overseas pushed the U.S. market higher on Thursday, helping stocks recover some of the ground they lost a day earlier.
In China, frantic efforts by authorities to stop a month-long rout in the country’s stock market met with some success. The Shanghai Composite surged after opening sharply lower. U.S. investors have become concerned that the sell-off there would start to hurt growth in the world’s second-biggest economy.
In Europe, stocks soared on speculation that last-ditch talks between Greece and its creditors would produce an agreement, preventing a possible Greek debt default.
Those problems, and the fear that they could hurt the global economy, have pushed down the U.S. stock market in recent weeks.
“We’re cautioning investors not to get too concerned,” said Alec Young, an investment strategist at Oppenheimer Funds. “There’s been a lot of noise recently, but when we really look into it, none of it, at this point, is leading us to a very negative view” of stocks.
Young thinks that the problems in Europe and China are not expected to do a huge amount of damage to the two economies in the long run.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 4.63 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,051.31. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 33.20 points, or 0.19 percent, to 17,548.62. The Nasdaq composite rose 12.64 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,922.40.
Stocks surged at the open, pushing the S&P 500 index nearly 30 points in early trading. Those gains faded throughout the day, in part because the early euphoria over the Chinese stock market proved short-lived, said Randy Frederick, a managing director at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.
“If people aren’t allowed to sell, of course (the market’s) not going to go down,” Frederick said. “Until you get back to the point where the market is free, there’s open trading and it’s not going down, then I’d say it’s stabilized.”
The Shanghai Composite surged 5.8 percent, but the index is still down 27 percent in the past month. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 3.7 percent.
Gains in the U.S. Thursday also were held back by losses for utility companies.
The dividend-rich stocks surged last year as investors looked for income as bond yields fell.
However, a rise in yields since January has made utility stocks seem less attractive.
