US STOCKS-Wall Street climbs as oil jumps after Gulf tanker attacks

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* Oil surges as much as 4%; Energy top gainer among S&P
sectors
* Disney up as MS sees higher Disney Plus subscriber growth
* Twitter drops as Moffett Nathanson sees rising costs
* Indexes up: Dow 0.42%, S&P 0.42%, Nasdaq 0.57%

(Updates to early afternoon)
By Shreyashi Sanyal
June 13 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks continued to gain on
Thursday after two days of declines, as energy shares turned
attractive after oil prices rose sharply on concerns of supply
disruption following suspected attacks on two tankers in the
Gulf of Oman.
Crude prices rose as much as 4%, a day after hitting
five-month lows, after the attacks near Iran and the Strait of
Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil consumption passes.
The S&P energy index .SPNY jumped 1.18%, the most among
the 11 major S&P sectors. Shares of oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp
XOM.N and Chevron Corp CVX.N rose 1% each.
"Chevron and Exxon Mobil were two of the session's better
performers, as the markets continue to digest news of oil tanker
blasts in the Gulf of Oman," said Connor Campbell, financial
analyst at Spreadex in London.
Offering the biggest boost to the S&P 500 index .SPX was
the communication services sector .SPLRCL , which rose 1%.
Walt Disney Co DIS.N gained 3.89% and was the biggest
contributor to the sector after Morgan Stanley raised its
forecast for Disney Plus subscriber growth.
Stocks have had a strong start to the month on hopes the
Federal Reserve will act to counter a slowing global economy due
to the escalating trade war with China, helping the benchmark
S&P 500 index climb 5% so far in June.
However, investors stayed cautious ahead of a meeting of the
Federal Reserve policymakers and the G20 summit. Markets are
anticipating an interest rate cut after U.S. consumer prices
data on Wednesday pointed to a moderate rise in inflation.
The Fed will meet on June 18-19 and markets have priced in
at least three rate cuts in 2019.
Meanwhile , on the trade front, there were doubts of any
improvement in what President Donald Trump called "testy" trade
relations with China in the run up to the G20 summit later in
this month.
"The sentiment around trade talks is generally more dire. I
think you're going to see the Fed being very tempered on rate
cuts and we're going to see these muted gains as we gauge how
severe the economic downturn is," said Matt Lloyd, chief
investment officer at Advisors Asset Management in Monument,
Colorado.
At 12:57 p.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was
up 109.01 points, or 0.42%, at 26,113.84, the S&P 500 was up
12.20 points, or 0.42%, at 2,892.04 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC was up 44.25 points, or 0.57%, at 7,836.97.
Also boosting the indexes were gains in marquee companies
Facebook Inc FB.O , Apple Inc AAPL.O , Amazon.com Inc
AMZN.O , Microsoft Corp MSFT.O and Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O ,
which rose between 0.3% and 1.3%.
Twitter Inc shares TWTR.N fell 4.16%, the most among S&P
500 companies, after brokerage Moffett Nathanson said it expects
the social media company's costs to rise and revenue growth to
slow.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.67-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and by a 2.41-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 27 new 52-week highs and one new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded 45 new highs and 54 new lows.