US STOCKS-Wall St climbs on Cisco, Disney's upbeat results

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* Cisco set for best day in eight months
* Disney rises after smaller-than-expected loss
* Indexes up: Dow 0.98%, S&P 0.90%, Nasdaq 0.61%

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By Medha Singh and Shivani Kumaresan
Nov 13 (Reuters) - Wall Street gained on Friday as Disney
and Cisco's upbeat results brought the focus back to corporate
earnings at the end of a volatile trading week that saw record
surges in coronavirus cases and increased hopes of a working
vaccine.
Cisco Systems Inc CSCO.O led gainers among the S&P 500 and
the Dow, helping the two indexes rise about 1% each.
The network gear maker jumped 6.7% as it gained from a
work-from-home driven surge in demand, while Walt Disney Co
DIS.N rose 2% as its rapidly growing streaming video business,
and a partial recovery at its theme parks limited its quarterly
loss. "We are finishing an extremely strong earnings season with
an exclamation point on Disney's impressive earnings," said Ryan
Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
The third-quarter earnings season is in its final stretch
with about 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported so far,
according to Refinitiv IBES data. Overall profit is expected to
fall 7.8% from last year, a significant improvement from a 21.4%
slump forecast on Oct. 1.
The three major U.S. stock indexes fell on Thursday as U.S.
coronavirus cases jumped and investors weighed how fast an
effective vaccine would be rolled out.
More than a dozen U.S. states reported a doubling of new
COVID-19 cases in the last two weeks, with Chicago's mayor
issuing a month-long stay-at-home advisory on Thursday.
Positive early data from a large vaccine study earlier this
week prompted a rotation into sectors that usually benefit from
an upswing in the economy, such as financial and energy stocks,
putting the S&P 500 .SPX and Dow .DJI on track for weekly
gains.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC , however, is headed for a
weekly decline as investors booked profits in market-leading
technology stocks, which have benefited from a stay-at-home
environment.
"Investors are still balancing between belief that value
trade will work, but growth trade will still make a lot of sense
with high quality companies because of the COVID murkiness still
around," said Andrew Smith, chief investment strategist at Delos
Capital Advisors in Dallas.
Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the
battleground state of Arizona expanded his electoral vote
margin, but the official transition remains in limbo as
President Donald Trump refuses to concede. At 12:00 p.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
rose 285.78 points, or 0.98%, to 29,364.80, the S&P 500 .SPX
gained 31.72 points, or 0.90%, to 3,568.73 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC gained 71.46 points, or 0.61%, to 11,781.05.
Growth stocks .RLG , currently largely comprised of tech
companies, edged 0.3% higher, while value names .RLV , which
currently include mostly cyclical stocks such as banks and
energy, advanced 1.4%.
All major S&P sectors were higher with materials .SPLRCM ,
industrials .SPLRCI and energy .SPNY posting the sharpest
gains.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
4.3-to-1 ratio, while a 2.4-to-1 ratio favored advancers on the
Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted five new 52-week highs and no new low,
and the Nasdaq Composite recorded 75 new highs and 15 new lows.