US STOCKS-S&P 500, Dow at all-time high as banks, industrial rise

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* Growth stocks set to outperform value for the second week
* Honeywell gains as brokerages raise price targets
* Indexes: Dow up 0.23%, S&P up 0.11%, Nasdaq off 0.15%

(Adds comment, details; updates prices)
By Shivani Kumaresan and Medha Singh
April 9 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and the Dow hit record highs
on Friday as economy-linked stocks including banks and
industrials gained on optimism around strong U.S. economic
growth.
Financial stocks .SPSY rose 0.6%, more than any other S&P
sector, with Bank of America Corp BAC.N , Citigroup Inc C.N
and JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM.N rising between 0.5% and 0.9%.
The banks will kick off the first-quarter earnings season
next week, and analysts expect profits for S&P 500 firms to have
jumped about 25% year on year, the strongest performance for the
quarter since 2018, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
"We have had a tremendous run recently and there's some
excitement about how strong corporate America's earnings will
be," said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL
Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"It is a chance to justify the rallies that we have seen
recently to new highs."
Data on Friday showed U.S. producer prices increased more
than expected in March, resulting in the largest annual gain in
nine-and-a-half years, likely marking the start of higher
inflation. However, the Federal Reserve's officials have maintained
that rising prices would be transitory because of the labor
market's slack and the U.S. central bank plans to keep interest
rates lower for a substantial period. "Historically, the reaction to PPI (producer prices index)
number like that would have had markets selling off but clearly
we are being made to understand that the Fed's inflation target
is truly asymmetric," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at
National Securities in New York.
"If the Fed is willing to ignore high inflation in the near
term, investors should likely do the same."
U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress to sharply increase
spending to combat climate change and gun violence in a budget
that marks a sharp departure from his predecessor, Donald Trump.
At 11:27 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
rose 76.22 points, or 0.23%, to 33,579.79, the S&P 500 .SPX
gained 4.60 points, or 0.11%, to 4,101.77 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC lost 20.53 points, or 0.15%, to 13,808.78.
The communication services .SPLRCL index, which houses
high-flying names, inched lower.
Still, the Russell 1000 growth index .RLG , which comprises
mainly technology-related stocks, is set to outperform its value
counterpart .RLV , made up of mostly financials and energy
names, for a second consecutive week following the recent
pullback in longer-dated Treasury yields. US/
Bank of America's weekly fund flow figures showed investors
have pumped more money into equities over the past five months
than in the last 12 years. Honeywell HON.N gained about 2% as Jefferies and J.P.
Morgan raised their price targets on the U.S. aero parts maker's
shares.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 1-to-1 ratio on
the NYSE and declining issues outnumbered advancers by a
1.5-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 37 new 52-week highs and no new lows,
while the Nasdaq recorded 124 new highs and 31 new lows.