| Stocks Begin The New Year in Rally Mode |
| Jan-02-2013 |
| Keywords: stocks, rally, fiscal cliff |
2013 begins with a bang on Wall Street as investors cheer action to avoid the fiscal cliff.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 308 points, its best start to any new year. The Nasdaq Composite skyrocketed 93-points. The S&P 500 gained 36 points on the day.
The market today expressed it jubilation over Congress finally passing a fiscal cliff deal. While reviews of the agreement are mixed, the accord at least offered the investors some certainty on taxes heading into 2013.
After months of political sparring on Capitol Hill, lawmakers finally passed a budget bill Tuesday, electing hike federal income tax rates on those couples earning more than $450,000 a year. The deal also delays painful automatic sequestration spending cuts for another two months.
The market further boosted by a stronger than expected rebound in manufacturing. The ISM manufacturing index for December came in at 50.7, rebounding from the sub-50 reading in November. Construction spending during the month of November however was weaker than expected, unexpectedly slipping .3%.
All 30-Dow components ended trading higher, led by a 5% jump in the shares of Hewlett-Packard. Caterpillar gained 4.3% on the day. While Alcoa, Bank of America, Cisco Systems, Intel, Coca Cola, Microsoft and Pfizer all logged better than 3% gains. A truly a strong, broad-based rally on the blue chip index.
Apple's stock continued to build on year-end momentum, today rallying 3.1% on news its already testing a new iPhone and version of its operation system.
Today's risk on trading took a big toll on debt prices. After logging the lowest year-end close in decades, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose 8 basis points, ending at a more than three-month high of 1.84%.
Commodity prices meanwhile benefitted from today's rally. Gold prices rose .5%, closing at $1,684.60 an ounce. Crude oil prices advanced $1.30, or 1.4%, settling at $93.12 a barrel. |
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Posted by Lou Dobbs Staff at 10:00 PM Email to a friend |
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