|
Wall Street soared on Thursday, with the Dow surging nearly 300 points and broader indexes rallying more than 5 percent, as market sentiment found a boost after China denied the rumor that it was reconsidering holdings of euro-zone bonds.
The Dow Jones industrial average rallied 284.54, or 2.85 percent, to 10,258.99. Financials continued to lead the gains in the blue-chips, with American Express jumping 5.66 percent, the most in all 30 composites. The Standard & Poor's 500 index spiked 35.11, or 3.29 percent, to 1,103.06 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq surged 81.80, or 3.73 percent, to 2,277.68, tuning positive for the year of 2010.
U.S. market opened sharply higher on Thursday and also successfully held the gains to the very end of the session after China expressed confidence in Europe.
The China State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the agency which manages the nation's reserves, said on its website that the reports that it is considering selling some of it holdings of euro- zone government bonds were "groundless."
Such report in the Financial Times unsettled investors in the final hour of trading in the previous session, triggering a severe sell-off as investors worried that European debt crisis could worsen if China moved away from Euro-zone bonds.
Wednesday's final reversal, which erased strong gains in the early session and helped the Dow end below 10,000 for the first time since February, underscored the lack of confidence among traders, as the market was very easily influenced by any bad news.
Thursday's economic news was a little bit weaker than expected, but still showed the economic recovery was on track in the biggest economy of the world.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of newly laid off workers filings claims for unemployment benefits fell by 14,000 to 460,000 last week, slightly higher than market expectations.
Meanwhile, the U.S. economic growth slowed as a separate report from the Commerce Department showed that the gross domestic products rose by 3.0 percent in the first three months of the year. That was slightly weaker than an initial estimate of 3.2 percent a month ago, and also fell short of economists' forecast for stronger growth of 3.4 percent.
Most of the oversea markets also ended sharply higher. Britain' s FTSE 100 and Germany's DAX index each rose 3.1 percent, while France's CAC-40 climbed 3.4 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 1.2 percent.
|
