US stocks rose on Tuesday, helped by gains in Ford Motor and General Motors after strong September vehicle sales.

Major automakers posted higher US new vehicle sales in September as consumers in hurricane-hit parts of the country rushed to replace flood-damaged cars.

General Motors' shares rose 3.1 per cent and hit a record high, while Ford's stock was up 2.3 per cent at $12.37.

Economically sensitive stocks continued to outperform, with the S&P materials index up 0.3 per cent.

“We're seeing moves into economically sensitive stocks, which is an indication that investors believe some of the favoraubly economic data that's coming out,” said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

At the same time, “investors, for whatever reason, are ignoring some of the things that have scared them” in the recent past, he said, including tensions between the United States and North Korea.

The indexes have been scaling record highs and on Monday found support from factory data that pointed to underlying strength in the US economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 84.39 points or 0.37 per cent to 22,641.99, the S&P 500 gained 4.37 points or 0.17 per cent to 2,533.49 and the Nasdaq Composite added 9.94 points or 0.15 per cent to 6,526.66.

Investors are also looking at upcoming quarterly earnings from big names to help justify the lofty market valuations.

Third-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are expected to have risen 5.5 per cent from a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters research, after rising a stronger-than-expected 12.3 per cent in the second quarter.

Lennar Corp's shares jumped 4.7 per cent following a higher-than-expected quarterly profit from the No. 2 US homebuilder. Shares of KB Home were up 0.7 per cent.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.14-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.17-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.

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