The S&P 500 rose 17.47, or 0.4%, to 4,697.53 and clinched an all-time high for the seventh straight day.
Trading was scattershot, though, and after climbing to an early gain of 0.8%, the S&P 500 at one point gave up virtually all of it.
The 10-year yield, which tends to move with expectations for the economy and inflation, dropped to 1.45% and is near its lowest level since September.
An encouraging report from Pfizer helped to lift the market, particularly companies that most need daily life to return to normal from the pandemic.
The headline report of the day was the one from the Labor Department that showed employers hired a net 531,000 workers in October.
One possible reason was that investors see more people heading back to work as helping to clear the supply-chain bottlenecks that have hit the economy and driven up inflation, said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments.
“Some of these moves look extreme to me,” Allspring Global Investment’s Jacobsen acknowledged, citing a sharp drop for the 30-year Treasury yield to 1.88% from 1.96%.
A day earlier, bond markets around the world shook after the Bank of England decided not to raise interest rates.
Companies in the index appear on track to report 39% growth in their quarterly earnings per share over year-ago levels, which would be the third-fastest since 2010.