Wall Street Is Back in Rally Mode

Indexes jumped despite war worries, spike in oil prices
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 2, 2022 4:02 PM CST
Markets Roar Back Despite 7% Jump in Oil Price
In this photo provided by the New York Stock Exchange, traders Ben Tuchman, left, and Colby Nelson work on the floor, Wednesday, March 2, 2022.   (Allie Joseph/New York Stock Exchange via AP)

Wall Street took another sharp swing Wednesday, this time back to rally mode, as stocks and Treasury yields rose even as oil prices continued to climb. The S&P 500 rose 1.9%, putting it back into the green for the week, after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he supports a more modest rise in interest rates this month than some investors had been fearing, the AP reports. The price of US oil jumped another 7% to $110.60 per barrel, the highest level in just over a decade. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 7.6% to $112.93 per barrel. The S&P 500 rose 80.28 points , to 4,386.54. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 596.40 points, or 1.8%, to 33,891.35. The Nasdaq rose 219.56 points, or 1.6%, to 13,752.02. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 50.37 points, or 2.5%, to 2,058.87.

More than 90% of stocks in the S&P 500 rose, with technology, financial, and health care companies accounting for much of the rally. Energy stocks helped lead the way as they rode higher energy prices, with those in the S&P 500 up 2.8%. Bank stocks also were big gainers as higher longer-term interest rates can mean bigger profits for them making loans. Ford jumped 8.4% after it said it was accelerating its transformation into an electric-vehicle company and split its EV and internal combustion operations into two individual businesses. Treasury yields jumped to recover some of their steep losses from the past week.

Gold receded, and a measure of nervousness among stock investors on Wall Street eased after swinging sharply in recent days. "We’ve seen wild swings, but not major changes in the indexes," said Jeff Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab. "Geopolitical conflicts can be very unsettling, but you don’t tend to get bear markets from these, just periods of volatility." Russia’s central bank said stock trading on the Moscow exchange would remain closed Wednesday for a third day, though trading of currencies and precious metals would resume for the first time this week. (More stock market stories.)

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