Tech, healthcare stocks prop up Wall Street

By Sruthi Shankar

REUTERS - U.S. stocks edged higher in late morning trading on Wednesday, helped by gains in technology and healthcare shares.

The best-performing technology sector has declined for the past five trading sessions, falling the most on Tuesday after reports of tepid iPhone X demand hit Apple shares and its suppliers.

"Ever since September, technology stocks have had some momentum left behind them," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

"After a last couple of days - Apple and its suppliers were down and perhaps that was an overreaction - people are buying what they hope to be bargains."

Trading volumes were muted in the holiday-shortened week between Christmas and New Year.

At 10:55 a.m. ET (1555 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 36.36 points, or 0.15 percent, at 24,782.57 and the S&P 500 was up 4.28 points, or 0.16 percent, at 2,684.78. The Nasdaq Composite was up 17.37 points, or 0.25 percent, at 6,953.62.

Oil prices fell after hitting a near two-and-a-half year high in the previous session, pressuring the S&P energy index, which fell 0.29 percent.

ConocoPhillips dropped 1.5 percent and Chevron fell 0.5 percent.

Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer rose 0.5 percent each, propping up the S&P healthcare sector.

Tesla shares fell more than 1 percent after brokerage KeyBanc lowered it estimates for Model 3 deliveries to roughly 5,000 units from 15,000 units for the fourth quarter.

Shares of wireless-charging technology developer Energous Corp soared about 80 percent after it got certification for its wireless charging transmitter.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,717 to 993. On the Nasdaq, 1,835 issues rose and 894 fell.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)