Friday the 13th turned out to be a lucky day for stocks, with the Dow and S&P 500 snapping a six-day losing streak, propelled by sharp gains in financials following JPMorgan's earnings report.
With the day's rally, the Dow and S&P 500 managed to eke out small gains for the week.
“We’ve been vastly oversold,” said Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS Financial Services. “We see that this bounce could take us into the beginning of next week…but between now and Labor Day, things could get very volatile.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up more than 200 points, lifted by JPMorgan and BofA . H-P was the only laggard on the blue-chip index.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also closed near session highs. The The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, tumbled below 17.
For the week, the financials led the key S&P sector gainers, while techs ended lower.
“From here to the end of the year, we could see upside for equities—we still see positive growth in earnings for the full-year and sentiment is off-the-charts negative,” said Savita Subramanian, head of U.S. equity and quantitative strategy at BofA Merrill Lynch on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." “So net-net, if we avoid a recession in the U.S., we could see positive returns for equities.”
Subramanian has a 1,450 year-end price target for the S&P 500.
JPMorgan Chase jumped after the financial giant beat Wall Street expectations, despite the $4.4 billion loss from the "London Whale" trading debacle. Still, the bank earned an overall profit of nearly $5 billion.
"We don't take it lightly," CEO Jamie Dimon told Wall Street analysts on a conference call of the trading loss. He added: "We're not making light of this error, but we do think it's an isolated event."
Other financials including BofA , Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs got a lift following JPMorgan's results.
