By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 climbed to record highs Thursday, as weakness in energy was mostly offset by a Tesla-fueled climb in consumer discretionary stocks and strength in big tech.

It was up 0.2% to 4,546.19, surpassing the intraday record of 4,555.85. The slipped 0.1% or 32 points and added 0.59%.

The energy stocks plummeted by 2% when oil prices reversed after hitting $86/barrel. This was due to investors taking profit.

Baker Hughes Halliburton, (NYSE:), Kinder Morgan (NYSE:) fell sharply after the release of quarterly results that were unexpectedly positive a day earlier.

Other sectors, such as financials or materials, were also affected by the downturn despite positive data.

US declined to 290,000. It was down from a revised 296,000 in the previous week. This contrasts with economists’ expectations of a 300,000.

Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a note, “With labor supply tightening and new record-high job openings following a Delta dip, it is becoming more difficult to layoff workers.” “It’s a decent bet, we think, that claims return to their pre-Covid lows, about 210K, around the turn of the year.”

As the Philly Fed regional index fell from 30.7 to 23.8 September and missed estimates of 25.0, supply-chain disruptions had a negative impact on manufacturing activity.

However, rising stock prices of consumer discretionary stocks helped to cover market losses. Tesla was in control.

Tesla (NASDAQ: ) has accelerated by 3%, after Wall Street celebrated the record-breaking quarter of Tesla, which beat analysts’ predictions on the top and bottom lines. It was supported by growing margins.

“Auto gross margin was 30%+ and roughly 250 bps ahead of Street expectations which highlights the massive leverage in the Tesla story now starting to take hold with Giga China front and center…,” Wedbush said in a note as it upgraded its price target on the stock to $1,100 from $1,000.

Tractor Supply (NASDAQ 🙂 has also supported consumer discretionary shares after posting better-than expected quarter results. This was aided by an increase of double-digits in comparable store sale.

Tractor Supply’s fiscal 3Q3 earnings per share were $1.95. This is an increase of $1.62 from a year ago and is well above the Wall Street estimate at $1.67. Shares were up by more than 4%.

International Business Machines’ (NYSE:) tech stock dropped almost 9% due to a disappointing third quarter and a weak legacy service business.

Apple (NASDAQ:), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:), Facebook (NASDAQ:), Alphabet (NASDAQ:) and Microsoft  (NASDAQ:) were mostly higher.