Stocks Surge Into the Close
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 Newmont Corporation Report
, up 4.1%, and
Kinross Gold
TheStreet Recommends
(KGC) - Get Kinross Gold Corporation Report
, higher by 2.7%.
Coeur d'Alene
(CDE) - Get Coeur Mining Inc. 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 Valero Energy Corporation Report
and a 7.1% move up in
Hess
(HES) - Get Hess Corporation 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 Activision Blizzard Inc 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 Mastercard Incorporated Report
to buy from hold and raised its target price to $250 from $133.
Bank of America downgraded
Citigroup
(C) - Get Citigroup Inc. Report
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.
