Japan PPI inflation slips to 11-mth low in July
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* Alphabet rallies after results
* Indexes: Dow up 0.3%, S&P 500 up 0.5%, Nasdaq up 0.5%
(Updates to late afternoon)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose in Wednesday afternoon
trading and were set to register a third straight day of gains,
with Alphabet Inc's shares jumping following its strong
quarterly results.
Alphabet GOOGL.O shares were last up 9% as it benefited
from lockdowns that drove retail and other advertisers online.
Videogame retailer GameStop Corp GME.N gained about 14%,
clawing back after nearly halving in value on Tuesday on the
back of a social media-driven trading rollercoaster ride.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is calling a meeting
this week of top officials, including from the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve, to discuss market
volatility driven by retail trading in shares of GameStop,
silver and other stocks favored on social media. L1N2K906E
"The broad tape continues to be strong," said Michael
O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Stamford,
Connecticut.
The retail trading frenzy is likely "to be here for a
while," said O'Rourke. "I don't know if it's going to be here
with the same intensity ... It's hard to maintain that type of
intensity. What we'll probably see are coordinated movements in
individual names by that crowd."
The Cboe Volatility index .VIX eased.
Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O shares dipped 0.7% as Jeff Bezos'
surprise move to step down as chief executive quashed optimism
about bumper quarterly results. However, analysts were upbeat on
the promotion of its cloud computing head to the top job.
U.S. companies are on track to post earnings growth for the
fourth quarter of 2020, data from Refinitiv showed on Wednesday,
which would defy expectations for profits to drop 10% due to the
pandemic. Based on results from 223 companies and estimates for
the rest, S&P 500 earnings are expected to have risen 0.9% in
the fourth quarter of 2020 from a year ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 88.28 points,
or 0.29%, to 30,775.76, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 17.25 points,
or 0.45%, to 3,843.56 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added
69.96 points, or 0.51%, to 13,682.74.
U.S. President Joe Biden is to meet with congressional
Democrats preparing to advance his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief
plan despite Republican pushback. Biden told congressional
Democrats he would not back down on including $1,400 checks for
struggling Americans in his COVID-19 relief plan but would
consider tighter limits on who gets them, lawmakers and aides
said. On the economic front, the ADP Report showed hiring by U.S.
private employers rebounded by 174,000 in January after a drop
in December. A more comprehensive jobs report is expected on
Friday. A separate ISM survey showed U.S. services industry activity
raced to its highest level in nearly two years in January.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
1.64-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.83-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 8 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 161 new highs and 1 new lows.