Wall Street gains for second straight day after tumultuous week. Technology and financial shares led Wall Street’s main indexes higher for a second straight session on Monday, with steady bond yields and volatility also helping the stock market bounce back from its worst week in two years.
Also helping the market were gains of 1.5 percent in both the S&P materials and industrials sectors after President Donald Trump unveiled his second budget.
The proposal for fiscal 2019 includes $200 billion for infrastructure spending, more than $23 billion for border security and immigration enforcement, as well as $716 billion for military programs, including the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
At 12:43 p.m. ET (1743 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 397.95 points, or 1.65 percent, at 24,588.85 and the S&P 500 was up 35.85 points, or 1.37 percent, at 2,655.4. The Nasdaq Composite was up 98.61 points, or 1.43 percent, at 6,973.10.
Ten of the 11 major S&P sectors were higher, with only the interest-rate sensitive real estate index in the red.
“I think the market was way, way oversold, way too fast and therefore there’s this natural bounce,” said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O‘Neil Securities in New York.
“There’s news coming out about the budget, fiscal stimulus and infrastructure plan that is adding fuel to the fire. People are very positive about it.”
Strong U.S. jobs and wages growth data on Feb. 2 raised the spectre of rising inflation and fears of accelerated interest rate hikes, which ignited a rally in bond yields and a sell-off in stocks.
Despite Monday’s gains and a roughly 1.5 percent jump on Friday, the Dow and the S&P are still roughly 6 percent lower since their close on Feb. 1.
“There are some open doors left, notably, where interest rates are and where they are heading. So while there has been some relief in some assets we don’t think the ”all clear“ has been sounded just yet,” said Eric Freedman, chief investment officer for U.S. Bank Wealth Management.
U.S. 10-year Treasury yields hit a new four-year high of 2.902 earlier Monday, and are currently trading at 2.8621 percent. [US/]
Wall Street’s fear gauge, VIX, short for the CBOE Volatility index was last at 27.11 on Monday, more than double its 50-day moving average but trading in a narrow 2-point range.
The energy index was up 1.8 percent as oil prices rose. [O/R]
Among stocks, General Dynamics was little changed percent after the U.S. defence contractor said it would buy smaller rival CSRA for about $6.8 billion. CSRA soared 32 percent.
Cisco was up 2.9 percent and American Express gained about 3 percent after Instinet upgraded the two components of the Dow Industrials to “buy”.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,031 to 849. On the Nasdaq, 1,974 issues rose and 927 fell.
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