Stocks rose broadly in morning trading on Wall Street Thursday and erased weekly losses for most of the major indexes.
The gains follow Wednesday’s bump higher after the Federal Reserve signaled it may begin easing its extraordinary support measures for the economy later this year.
The S&P 500 index rose 1.3% as of 11 a.m. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 486 points, or 1.4%, to 34,703 and the Nasdaq rose 1%.
Nearly every stock in the benchmark S&P 500 rose. It’s now up 0.5% for the week and has recovered from a from a sharp sell-off on Monday.
Technology companies and banks led the way higher. Cloud-based software company Salesforce.com was a standout with a 5.1% gain after raising its sales forecast for the year.
Bond yields rose, which helped send bank stocks higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 1.38% from 1.32% late Wednesday. Citigroup rose 3.3%.
Other standouts included Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants. Its stock jumped 5.6% after delivering strong quarterly results.
Investors got some reassuring news out of China, where Evergrande, one of the country’s biggest private real estate developers, said it will make a payment due Thursday on a domestic bond. Concerns about the potential for a default jarred global markets earlier in the week.
European and Asian markets rose.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday indicated it may start raising its benchmark interest rate sometime next year, earlier than it envisioned three months ago. It also said it will likely begin slowing the pace of its monthly bond purchases “soon” if the economy keeps improving. The Fed and other central banks have been buying bonds throughout the pandemic to help keep long-term interest rates low.
The central bank has been closely watching job growth to get a better gauge of the economic recovery. The jobs market has seen a choppy recovery amid a resurgence of COVID-19 with the highly contagious delta variant. The Labor Department’s latest update shows that the number of Americans applying for unemployment aid rose last week for a second straight week to 351,000.
