Solid gains by banks and technology companies drove stocks higher on Wall Street, erasing the market’s losses from a day earlier and more in Tuesday’s Stock Market Update.
Wells Fargo rose 1.9 percent Tuesday and Intel climbed 1.3 percent.
Bank were benefiting from rising bond yields, which let them charge higher rates on loans.
Bed Bath & Beyond soared 22 percent in very heavy trading after The Wall Street Journal reported that the troubled retailer is being targeted by activist investors.
STOCK MARKET UPDATE
ANALYST’S TAKE: “A lot of today’s move has to do with the change in direction in the yield curve,” said Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA. “It just goes to show that we’re kind of in a period of indecisiveness in the market, where the market is grappling with what is obviously slowing growth around the globe and a little bit of uncertainty here in the U.S. about what growth is going to look like once we get past the seasonally weak first quarter.”
KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 index rose 20 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,818. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 140 points, or 0.6 percent, to 25,657. The Nasdaq added 53 points, or 0.7 percent, to 7,691. Bond prices fell, sending their yields higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.42 percent.
DISSAPOINTING DATA: Investors mostly shrugged off two new bellwether reports on the economy that fell short of economists’ forecasts. The Conference Board, a business research group, said its consumer confidence index fell to 124.1 in March from 131.4 in February.
And the Commerce Department said the number of homes under construction fell 8.7 percent last month as ground breakings for single-family houses declined to their lowest level in nearly two years. Single-family housing starts are running 2.3 percent below last year’s pace.
The housing starts data weighed on homebuilder stocks. D.R. Horton slid 1.9 percent.
BIG APPLE: Shares in Apple dropped 0.3 percent, giving up an early gain, a day after the consumer electronics giant announced a suite of new services to run on its devices.
The company plans to launch a subscription TV service dubbed Apple TV Plus, which will be ad-free and will compete with big streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Video.
BOARDROOM BRAWL: Bed Bath & Beyond soared 20.3 percent in heavy trading after The Wall Street Journal reported that the troubled retailer is being targeted by three activist investors.
ROUGH SEAS: Carnival slumped 9.8 percent after the cruise line operator’s latest quarterly results fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts. The company also issued a weaker-than-expected second-quarter earnings outlook.
ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude climbed 1.9 percent to settle at $59.94 a barrel. Brent crude, used to price international oils, added 0.3 percent to close at $67.97 a barrel.
The pickup in oil prices helped boost energy stocks. Anadarko Petroleum rose 3.1 percent.
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