Trading at the midday continued to advance with the Dow leaping 472 points to 24,663. Nasdaq jumped 121 points to 6995.
Consumer goods company Unilever threatened to withdraw its ads from Facebook and Google unless the digital platforms combat the plethora of objectionable content on their sites. Fake news, racist comments, and sexist posts create division in society that the owner of popular brands such as Ben & Jerry's, Best Foods and Dove will not support. Unilever spent $8.6 billion in advertising in 2017.
Ford expanded a recall of model year 2006 Ranger pick-up trucks to an additional 33,428 vehicles. Owners have been warned not to drive the vehicles due to a defective air bag inflator that may rupture. Ford will tow the recalled vehicles to a dealership in order to replace the defective part and provide a free loaner vehicle to drivers.
Amazon will be eliminating jobs in its consumer organization which includes retail and marketplace businesses in addition to the Amazon Restaurants food delivery service. Employees can apply to open positions in other units that are expanding such as Amazon Web Services and voice assistant Alexa. The impacted jobs are all located in Seattle.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 3 to 1 on the NYSE and by more than 5 to 2 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 soared 39 points to 2,658. Bitcoin leaped $437 to $8,744.
