Bulls Go Wire to Wire

Updated from 4:14 p.m. EDT

U.S. stocks jumped Tuesday as a pullback in oil prices and an upbeat report on the housing sector awakened buyers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 128 points, or 1.03%, to 12,510.30, putting the blue-chip index back in to positive territory for the year. Twenty-nine of the Dow's 30 components finished the day in the black, led by Altria's (MO Quote) 2.1% climb.

The S&P 500 gained 13.22 points, or 0.93%, to 1437.77, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 28.07 points, or 1.16%, to 2450.33.

"The fears of a recession abated today, and that certainly gave us a good bid," said Jay Suskind, head of institutional equity trading with Ryan Beck & Co. "There was a lot of relief from the consumer side, in that things may not be as bad as they have seemed. It wasn't a volatile session, and we were up big all day, which is good to see."

About 2.75 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, with advancers beating decliners by a 3-to-1 margin. Volume on the Nasdaq reached 1.96 billion shares, with winners outpacing decliners 2 to 1.

Helping the market's mood was a drop of $1.30 in oil futures to $64.64 a barrel. Most other commodities fell, as well, including a decline of 24 cents in the price of natural gas to $7.43 per million British thermal units.

To view Farnoosh Torabi's video take on today's market, click here.