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* Exxon posts first annual loss as publicly listed company
* Amazon, Alphabet among top boosts to S&P 500
* Indexes up: Dow 1.9%, S&P 500 1.8%, Nasdaq 1.8%
(Updates to afternoon trading)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
Feb 2 (Reuters) - Major U.S. stock indexes were up more than
1% in Tuesday afternoon trading, helped by gains in Amazon.com
and Google-parent Alphabet ahead of their results and by
optimism over progress on a large fiscal pandemic relief
package.
Shares of Alphabet GOOGL.O and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O ,
both set to report their fourth-quarter earnings after market
close, were among the top boosts to the S&P 500 .SPX .
Alphabet, which will report the cost and operating profit of
its Google Cloud business for the first time, added 1.7%, while
Amazon.com Inc rose 2.3%. Democrats in Congress prepared on Tuesday to take the first
steps toward fast-track passage of President Joe Biden's $1.9
trillion COVID-19 relief package. Adding to the upbeat mood, new cases of COVID-19 in the
United States fell for a third week in a row, the first time
since last September. "There's been a back-and-forth emotional swing over the
reality of problems we're facing with COVID near term... and
some form of the Biden proposal will pass, and there are
certainly investors who are willing to look down the road and
think the market and economy will look brighter," said Rick
Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment
office in New Vernon, New Jersey.
The recent mania driven by retail investors over heavily
shorted assets showed some signs of fizzling out. GameStop Corp
GME.N , one of the stocks that had run up sharply in the
frenzy, was down more than 50%, falling sharply for the second
day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 586.99 points,
or 1.94%, to 30,798.9, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 68.11 points,
or 1.80%, to 3,841.97 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added
247.25 points, or 1.84%, to 13,650.65.
Wall Street's fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility index .VIX ,
retreated.
Exxon Mobil Corp XOM.N posted its first annual loss as a
public company. However, its shares rose more than 1% as its
quarterly adjusted profit topped estimates. Shares of United Parcel Service Inc UPS.N gained after it
beat quarterly profit estimates on a surge in home delivery
volume due to pandemic-fueled online purchases of holiday gifts
and staples. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
3.22-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.90-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 16 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 152 new highs and 7 new lows.