Post-Irene, US stocks surge in opening trade

Aug 29, 2011 |

New York

Tags:

US stocks rallied sharply in opening trade on Monday as Wall Street rode optimism spurred by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke's remarks and Hurricane Irene's lighter-than-expected damage.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 162.72 points (1.44 per cent) to 11,447.26 in the first 10 minutes of trading.

The broader S&P 500 advanced 19.17 points (1.63 per cent) to 1,195.97, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite climbed 40.64 points (1.64 per cent) to 2,520.49.

Stocks ended the week on Friday higher, after four straight weeks of decline, lifted by a key speech by Bernanke indicating the central bank expects economic growth will accelerate in the second half of the year.

Lingering optimism stemming from Bernanke's speech 'has helped the bulls resume the reins, despite the central banker's ambiguous stance on another round of quantitative easing', said Andrea Kramer at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

"In addition, Tropical Storm Irene's relatively tame path of destruction has also sparked optimism," she said.

Hurricane Irene, which was later downgraded to a tropical storm, largely spared New Yorkers as it tore through the US east coast over the weekend.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/93287" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-fb764796e5170125427e3d403d20f97d" value="form-fb764796e5170125427e3d403d20f97d" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="82182592" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>