Post date: Apr 23, 2013 9:6:51 PM
Wall Street rallies after recovery from Twitter-driven drop.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (APRIL 23, 2013) (NYSE) - U.S. stocks climbed on Tuesday (April 23) in a broad rally, recovering from sharp declines sparked by a "bogus" Associated Press tweet about explosions at the White House.
A false tweet by hackers of two explosions at the White House that injured U.S. President Barack Obama provoked a steep drop in stocks, before they quickly recovered minutes later.Thomson Reuters data showed the benchmark S&P 500 index fell 14.6 points, or 0.93 percent, in the space of 3 minutes when the tweet hit the market. With the S&P 500 valued at about $14.6 trillion (USD) at the time of the false tweet, the plunge briefly wiped out $136.5 billion of the index's value.
Stocks had seen a solid advance before the tweet, lifted by a host of strong corporate earnings, including Travelers Cos Inc, Netflix Inc and Coach Inc.
The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 152.29 points, or 1.05 percent, to 14,719.46 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 16.28 points, or 1.04 percent, to 1,578.78. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 35.78 points, or 1.11 percent, to close at 3,269.33.
Netflix Inc shares jumped 24.4 percent to $216.99 while Coach shot up 9.8 percent to $55.55. They were the S&P 500's two biggest percentage gainers.
Netflix shares shot higher after the movie streaming service reported earnings that beat expectations and strong subscriber growth. Coach stock leaped after the upscale leather goods maker and retailer reported higher-than-expected quarterly sales.
Travelers Cos helped lift the Dow, up 2.1 percent at $86.35 after the insurer posted earnings that topped expectations and boosted its dividend.
Earnings season has been largely positive, with more than 68.9 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported results so far beating expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data. Since 1994, 63 percent have surpassed estimates on average, while the beat rate is 67 percent for the past four quarters.