NEW YORK – Reassuring comments from a Federal Reserve official and better earnings from two big retailers helped push the stock market higher Tuesday.

Stock indexes wobbled between gains and losses in early trading, then took a turn higher just before noon. That’s when news crossed that James Bullard, head of the Fed’s St. Louis branch, told an audience in Germany that the Fed ought to stick with its bond-buying effort to bolster the economic recovery.

“Those words were a salve for investors’ nerves,” said Lawrence Creatura, a fund manager at Federated Investors. Other Fed officials have recently talked about scaling back the program. “There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding this issue. And uncertainty and investors aren’t always a happy match.”

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 52.30 points to 15,387.58, a gain of 0.3 percent. Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up 2.87 points to 1,669.16, a slight increase of 0.2 percent. The Dow and the S&P are at record highs. The Nasdaq composite rose 5.69 points to 3,502.12, a 0.2 percent gain.

Many investors were already looking ahead to today, when the Federal Reserve will release minutes from its most recent policy meeting and Chairman Ben Bernanke will go before Congress to discuss his outlook for the U.S. economy.

“I think a lot of people are sitting on their hands waiting to see what the Fed head says tomorrow,” said Michael Binger, senior portfolio manager at Gradient Investments in Minneapolis, Minn.

Binger said some investors believe the Fed’s support is the main reason the stock market has soared to all-time highs. If the Fed pulls back, they reason, the market’s epic rally would come to an abrupt end.