(For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock markets, click or type LIVE/ in a news window) (Updates to close, adds commentary, byline) NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Wall Street closed higher on Thursday, boosted by gains in Apple and Amazon ahead of their earnings reports, while solid results from companies including Caterpillar and Merck helped ease concerns about slowing economic growth denting profits. High-profile stocks Tesla Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc boosted the Nasdaq and helped propel the index to a record after the S&P 500 and Dow reached fresh peaks earlier in the week. Both Apple and Amazon were scheduled to post quarterly results after the closing bell. Caterpillar Inc added rose after reporting a better-than-expected quarterly profit on rising commodity prices, while a bullish forecast from drugmaker Merck & Co Inc helped boost its shares. Investors were also keeping an eye on Washington where President Joe Biden said he had secured a new $1.75 trillion framework for economic and climate change spending. “Earnings continue to be very good,” said Bill Stone, chief investment officer at the Glenview Trust Co in Louisville, Kentucky, who also noted that Biden’s framework, if it succeeds, would not boost corporate taxes as investors had previously feared. “Underneath the surface, that’s a positive for corporate earnings” going forward, said Stone. According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 44.85 points, or 0.98%, to end at 4,596.25 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 212.28 points, or 1.39%, to 15,448.12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 236.94 points, or 0.67%, to 35,727.63. Solid earnings also helped offset a report from the Commerce Department which showed the U.S. economy grew at a 2% annualized rate in the third quarter as COVID-19 infections flared up, short of the 2.7% estimate, while another set of data showed fewer Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market slowly improves. “Clearly we are seeing a large batch of macroeconomic data that has been coming through during the middle of third-quarter earnings reporting season and you are seeing a little bit of a tug-of-war that exists between macroeconomic data that is appearing to be somewhat softer at the margin and corporate performance which is proving to be better than expectations,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis. Earnings reports have helped advance in the benchmark S&P index in 10 of the previous 12 sessions, with analysts now expecting profits for S&P 500 companies to grow 38.6% year-on-year in the third quarter. Of the 244 S&P 500 companies that had reported by Thursday morning, 82% had beaten estimates. Among the decliners however was EBay Inc whose shares tumbled after the e-commerce firm forecast downbeat holiday-quarter revenue. (Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Sinéad Carew in New York Editing by Matthew Lewis)