Stocks Surge Into the Close

The market in New York overcomes earlier selling pressure.

Author:: TSC Staff
Publish date:: Nov 6, 2007 5:10 PM EST

Updated from 4:16 p.m. EST

Stocks in the U.S. ended at their session highs Tuesday as a late afternoon rally sent the major averages into the close on an up note.

The

Dow Jones Industrial Average

rose 117.54 points, or 0.9%, to 13,660.94, and the

S&P 500

was up 18.10 points, or 1.2%, at 1520.27. The

Nasdaq

gained 30 points, or 1.1%, to 2825.18.

Commodities had a banner day, with crude oil surging $2.72 to $96.70 a barrel, and gold jumping $12.60 at $823.40 an ounce, putting it near its 1980 all-time closing high.

Shares of energy companies and miners were lifted by the action. The Philadelphia Gold and Silver Sector Index gained 3.5%, and the Amex Gold Bugs Index popped 4.4%, putting both among the best-performing subgroups of the day.

Big winners in terms of individual stocks were

Newmont Mining

(NEM) - Get Report

, up 4.1%, and

Kinross Gold

(KGC) - Get Report

, higher by 2.7%.

Coeur d'Alene

(CDE) - Get Report

was stronger by 13.5%.

On the energy side, the Amex Oil Index advanced 2.8%, led by a 4.8% rise in

Valero Energy

(VLO) - Get Report

and a 7.1% move up in

Hess

(HES) - Get Report

Valero's increase came after it said shrinking refining margins pushed its third-quarter operating income down to $1.2 billion from $2.3 billion in the same period last year. Valero's adjusted profits, however, topped analysts' lowered estimates.

Elsewhere, mortgage lender

IndyMac Bancorp

(IMB)

reported a loss of $202.7 million, or $2.77 a share, for the third quarter, reversing last year's profit.

Largely responsible for the loss were pretax credit costs of $407.7 million and a $167.2 million pretax loss related to mortgage-backed securities. For the fourth quarter and next year, IndyMac said it "could be modestly profitable, or we could struggle and have additional losses, although we believe any quarterly losses would likely be substantially lower than the

third quarter."

IndyMac slipped 2.2%.

Also,

Activision

(ATVI) - Get Report

topped estimates, while

Sun Microsystems

(JAVA)

saw its revenue miss the consensus. Both reported following the last close.

Nortel

(NT)

swung to a quarterly profit.

Among analyst calls, Deutsche Bank upgraded

MasterCard

(MA) - Get Report

to buy from hold and raised its target price to $250 from $133.

Bank of America downgraded

Citigroup

to neutral from buy, and Morgan Stanley cut its rating on soft lines and hard lines retailers to cautious from in-line.

Overseas, markets were mostly higher. London's FTSE tacked on 0.2%, and Frankfurt's Dax was up 0.3%. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei slipped 0.1%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.7%.

Government bond prices were falling. The 10-year note was down 5/32 in price, yielding 4.34%, and the 30-year bond was losing 7/32 to yield 4.63%.

The dollar was weak, continuing its downtrend against most other major currencies, with the exception of the Japanese yen. Against the euro, it hit a record low.