Collectively, Wall Street analysts have issued more than 12,000 individual ratings on stocks in the S&P 500. By aggregating the median fair value estimates on every company, FactSet Research builds what is known as a "bottom-up" target price for the entire index.

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks crept to a record as the S&P 500 nudged higher after a quiet Tuesday of trading. The main measure of Wall Street’s health rose 0.2% to finish just above its all-time closing high, set last month. Most of the stocks within the index rose as it danced around the milestone through the day.

Microsoft was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward. It rose 1.3% after saying it had developed what it calls the world’s first “quantum processing unit,” which cou