NEW YORK ¨C U.S. stocks climbed in afternoon trading on Tuesday, lifting both the Dow and S&P 500 to record highs as health care shares extended this week¡¯s gains.

Actavis PLC, Gilead Sciences, Celgene and other biotech names were among the S&P 500¡¯s biggest drivers, a day after Allergan agreed to be bought by Actavis. The Nasdaq biotech index was up 2.1 percent, adding to Monday¡¯s 0.3 percent gain.

The S&P health care index was up 1.6 percent, while shares of Actavis were up 8.3 percent, Gilead¡¯s rose 3.3 percent and shares of Celgene were up 2.4 percent. Helping Actavis were bullish analyst notes.

¡°A little bit of a risk trade is coming back on, and those are the areas for the M&A,¡± said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners in New York. ¡°It¡¯s a very, very good environment to buy growth, so I don¡¯t quibble with the notion that there¡¯s going to be more M&A.¡±

Among the biggest boosts for the Dow, shares of UnitedHealth were up 2 percent.

Further support for equities came from U.S. producer prices that kept intact a trend of benign inflation.

At 2:55 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average rose 73.3 points, or 0.42 percent, to 17,721.05, the S&P 500 gained 13.48 points, or 0.66 percent, to 2,054.8 and the Nasdaq Composite added 35.50 points, or 0.76 percent, to 4,706.50.

The S&P 500 hit an intraday record at 2,055.84 while the Dow hit a record at 17,732.62, and both were on track to post record closes as well.

The largest percentage decliner on the S&P 500 was Urban Outfitters, down 7.1 percent, a day after reporting results.

On the Nasdaq 100 the largest gainer was Illumina, which rose 4.6 percent, while the largest decliner was Yahoo , down 1.4 percent.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,988 to 1,055, for a 1.88-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,688 issues rose and 1,020 fell for a 1.65-to-1 ratio.

The benchmark S&P 500 index was posting 77 new 52-week highs and one new low; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 89 new highs and 47 new lows.