Wall Street rallies after two days of losses
Updated: All 11 major sectors of the S&P 500 were trading higher, with energy, up more than 2%, leading the gains.
US stocks on Wall Street mostly staged a broad-based recovery after two days of losses this week. The exception was the technology-heavy Nasdaq. which slipped into the red late in the session.
Stocks have fluctuated wildly this week, highlighting the market’s fragility as investors continue to question whether the US economy is growing so quickly that the Federal Reserve will have to ramp up its tightening efforts.
At the close in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 164.70 points to 24,962.48 after earlier gaining more than 350 points. The S&P 500 finished 0.1% higher at 2703.96 while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.1% to 7210.09.
Energy stocks, which rose 1.1%, led the gains in the S&P 500 with US crude for April delivery settling up 1.8% at $US62.77 a barrel. .
Chesapeake Energy contributed to the rise after the natural-gas company beat analysts’ expectations on earnings and revenue to send shares up 22%.
Among the Dow industrials, United Technologies rose 3.3%, contributing 30 points to the rise after its chief executive said the conglomerate was considering splitting up key parts of its business..
“The market isn’t going to be a one-way street as it has been the last couple of years,” said Ernesto Ramos, a portfolio manager with BMO Global Asset Management. “There is an increase in volatility and a lot of the trends that were in place for a long time are starting to reverse themselves.”
US 10-year Treasury yields rose after the release of Fed minutes on Wednesday, hitting a new four-year high, before settling lower at 2.921%.
“At some point yields rise to a level that’s going to create a headache for corporate America,” said Bob Michele, global head of fixed income at JP Morgan Asset & Wealth Management. He expects yields to rise to around 3.25% later in 2018.
“I feel like if I’m wrong it’s not because it goes back to 2%, it’s because they shoot to 4%,” he says.
In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 index fell 0.1%. France’s CAC 40 rose 0.1%, Germany’s DAX eased 0.07% and the UK’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.4%.
The Citi economic surprise index for the eurozone, which measures whether data are beating analyst forecasts, fell into negative territory for the first time since September 2016.
Nevil Gibson
Fri, 23 Feb 2018
Fri, 23 Feb 2018
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Wall Street rallies after two days of losses
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