Stocks Advance as Bernanke Signals No Change to Stimulus

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- U.S. markets were gaining momentum Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated in the text of his testimony to Congress that he remains supportive of current monetary policy, arguing that pulling-back on the bank's stimulus measure wouldn't be prudent.

"A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further," he said. "Such outcomes tend to be associated with extended periods of lower, not higher, interest rates, as well as poor returns on other assets. Moreover, renewed economic weakness would pose its own risks to financial stability."

His comments built upon St. Louis Federal Bank President James Bullard's remarks Tuesday that quantitative easing remains the best monetary policy option right now.

The S&P 500 was up 0.4% to 1,676.49 while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher by 0.5% to 15,495.67. The Nasdaq was up 0.3% to 3,511.34.

NetApp (NTAP) was the biggest percentage gainer in the S&P after the data storage company said Tuesday it planned to cut 900 jobs as part of a restructuring. NetApp said it would begin paying a quarterly dividend of 15 cents a share, and it boosted its stock buyback plan to $3 billion. The company posted fiscal fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 69 cents a share, topping estimates by a penny. Shares were gaining 6.1% to $38.37.

Intuit (INTU) was also a top gainer, up 2.6% to $59.96 after the software producer booked fiscal third quarter earnings that exceeded estimates by four cents at $2.97 a share and sales that also beat expectations as online customers for its small business services increased.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) was rising 5.2% to $45.89 after Citi analyst Andrew Baum raised his rating on the pharmaceutical company to "buy" from "neutral" and hiked his price target to $55 from $33, writing that Bristol-Myers could stand to gain significantly from its cancer treatments in the pipeline. "Active immunotherapy will become the backbone of at least 60% of cancer indications over the next ten years ... [Bristol-Myers'] very broad checkpoint agent positioned to capture a very significant share of an emergent $24 billion checkpoint agent market," he wrote.

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