Wall Street rebounds with banks, energy; to snap 5-day fall

By Caroline Valetkevitch

(Reuters) – U.S. stocks jumped on Friday, putting the S&P 500 on track to end a five-day losing streak, led by financial shares and gains in commodity-related shares.

U.S. oil prices settled 12.3 percent higher, boosting the energy sector () up 2.2 percent. The materials sector () was up 2.7 percent.

Investors snapped up beaten-down shares of financials. U.S.-listed shares of Deutsche Bank (N:) were up 11.3 percent at $17.27, while the S&P financial index () rallied 3.8 percent.

“Europe was strong, especially the banks, and that appeared to have some positive carryover effect on banking stocks here in the U.S.,” said John Carey, portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management in Boston, which has about $220 bln in assets under management.

Also helping boost sentiment, he said, was that U.S. consumer spending regained some strength in January.

The Dow Jones industrial average () rose 302.63 points, or 1.93 percent, to 15,962.81, the S&P 500 () gained 34.62 points, or 1.89 percent, to 1,863.7 and the Nasdaq Composite () added 71.39 points, or 1.67 percent, to 4,338.23.

“It’s too early to say whether (the rally) is the beginning of a more sustained recovery, but it’s encouraging and it shows there is still interest in stocks” despite this year’s selloff, Carey said.

Financials have been the weakest-performing sector this year. Recession fears have compounded concern about their exposure to the energy sector and expectations that global interest rates are unlikely to rise quickly.

This week’s selloff saw the S&P 500 touch a two-year low on Thursday, and the index is down about 9 percent since the start of the year.

Wynn Resorts (O:) rose 13.2 percent to $67.59 after the casino operator reported strong quarterly profit.

Volume was relatively light ahead of the long holiday weekend in United States.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,360 to 654. On the Nasdaq, 1,935 issues rose and 738 fell.

(additional reporting by Aastha Agnihotri and Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza and Nick Zieminski)

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