Wall Street's main indexes jumped on Monday as Bank of America led a rally among lenders after reporting a smaller-than-expected drop in profit, with its new loans benefiting from higher borrowing costs.
Bank of America Corp jumped 5.17% as the lender's net interest income surged in its third quarter, even though it added $378 million to its loan-loss reserves.
"Bank earnings have generally been good. Markets are loving Bank of America's earnings, but how you interpret that toward the rest of earnings season can be a little tricky, and how you interpret that vis-à-vis the health of the consumer," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.
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Bank of NY Mellon Corp also benefited from higher interest rates, sending its shares up 4.48%.
Overall, higher rates boosted interest incomes for lenders in the third quarter, but turbulent markets choked off dealmaking and banks set aside more funds to brace for an economic slowdown.
The S&P 500 banks index was up 3.43%. All the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes were higher with technology, communication services and consumer discretionary gaining between 3% and 4%.
Wall Street is deep in bear market territory, with economic indicators pointing to little signs of decades-high inflation cooling, but some analysts noted that stocks at such depressed levels could pave the way for short-term rallies.
"It's more just short-term technicals where you've got people overextended on the downside," said Jonathan Waite, fund manager at Frost Investment Advisors.
Some traders pointed to seasonality factors also in play during October, which has historically seen stocks climb heading into the end of the year.
Shares of Goldman Sachs, which will post results on Tuesday, were up 1.96%, following reports of a plan to combine its investment banking and trading businesses.
Major megacap growth stocks like Apple Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com and Tesla Inc added between 2.5% and 7.6% as the benchmark 10-year yield fell for the first time in three days.
Yields tracked moves in the UK bond market, after new Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt reversed most of Prime Minister Liz Truss's economic growth plan.
The S&P 500 Growth index gained 3.3%. Tesla Inc, Netflix and Johnson & Johnson are also expected to report results later in the week.
Analysts now expect profit for S&P 500 companies to have risen just 3% from a year ago, much lower than an 11.1% increase expected at the start of July, according to Refinitiv data.
At 12:26 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 532.47 points, or 1.80%, at 30,167.30, the S&P 500 was up 93.95 points, or 2.62%, at 3,677.02, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 341.11 points, or 3.30%, at 10,662.50.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 7.45-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 3.82-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded no new 52-week high and two new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 58 new highs and 94 new lows.
(Reporting by Ankika Biswas and Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Susan Mathew; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Arun Koyyur)
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