While you were sleeping: UPDATED Tech stocks lift Wall Street

Tech stocks rose 1.2% and helped lift Wall Street to a strong close after a volatile session in which major indexes swung several times between gains and losses.

Consumer and healthcare stocks also attracted strong buying, offsetting losses in the energy sector..

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7%, or 117.69 points,to 16,516.26 at the close. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.0% to 4685.73 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index finished up 0.8% to 1939.27 after rising as high as 1.2%.

But even with the rebound over the past two days' trading, the S&P500 is still down 5.2% this year.

"This is a market that's been selling off very hard and is probably short-term oversold," Atlanta-based Ridgeworth Investments senior strategist Alan Gayle told Bloomberg. "Trying to read the day-to-day implications from Chinese policy moves is exceptionally challenging."

Oil continues to weaken 
Benchmark Brent crude touched $US30.43 per barrel, the lowest since April 2004, while US West Texas Intermediate crude slid as low as $US30.10, the lowest since December 2003.

"The momentum is too strong to the bearish side, even if fundamentally nothing has changed," Energy Management Institute senior partner Dominick Chirichella told Reuters.

Shares of Alcoa dropped 9.3% after it posted quarterly earnings that topped expectations though revenue fell short of estimates. Mostly though, the stock was hit by concern about the ongoing slide in commodity prices.

Overall, US earnings are expected to show a drop of 4.7% in the fourth quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data.

"Expectations for earnings and revenue growth are pretty low right now, so the opportunity to beat expectations is as easy as jumping over a limbo stick," Chicago-based BMO Private Bank chief investment officer Jack Ablin told Reuters.

The US jobs market keeps showing signs of strength. Job openings increased in November, rising 82,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.43 million, according to the Labor Department. Hiring increased to 5.20 million in November, up from 5.17 million in October.

"Labour market fluidity is increasing," Thomas Costerg, a senior US economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York, told Bloomberg.

"More people are taking risks. People are happy to put their necks out to look around and get a new job. There's less slack to work through."

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index ended the day with a 1.9% increase from the previous close. The UK's FTSE 100 Index rose 1%, France's CAC 40 Index gained 1.5%, while Germany's DAX Index increased 1.6%.

Car manufacturers’ shares received a boost from a Chinese government report predicting the country's vehicle sales are set to rise this year, thanks to a tax cut on purchases of small passenger cars.

Total deliveries may rise about 6% to top 26 million vehicles, according to Bloomberg, citing the state-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

(BusinessDesk)