The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 211.88 points, or 1.67 percent, to close at 12,887.93, propelled by Home Depot and AmEx . The blue-chip index is back in the black for the week and for the month.
The S&P 500 jumped 22.13 points, or 1.65 percent, to finish at 1,360.02. The Nasdaq soared 39.01 points, or 1.37 percent, to end at 2,893.25. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq snapped their four-day losing streak.
The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, tumbled to finish below 18.
All 10 S&P sectors closed in positive territory, led by telecoms and energy.
“I’m a little skeptical,” said Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS Financial Services on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “This rally’s primarily driven by enormous bouts of short-covering in the euro. It’s a terrific move, but we’re about where we were three days ago.”
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged to do "whatever it takes" to protect the euro zone from collapse, including fighting unreasonably high government borrowing costs. European shares finished sharply higherfollowing Draghi's remarks.
Hopes that the U.S. Federal Reserve will increase its efforts to stimulate a flagging economy, with some strategists saying the move will come as early as its rate-setting meeting next week, helped further soothe concerns about the economy.
“No one’s going to discount what [Draghi’s] saying, but we’re seeing people just short-covering and not buying,” said Rick Fier, director of equities trading at Conifer Securities. “This also doesn’t change the [global slowdown] problems that are out there … the one trade out there is the central banks’ coordinated-effort trade and that’s only going to work for so long and won’t be a reason to buy stocks in the end.”
Stocks also got an extra lift following a pair of better-than-expected economic reports. Weekly jobless claims fell 35,000 to a seasonally adjusted 353,000, dropping to almost a four-year low, according to the Labor Department.
And overall durable goods orders jumped 1.6 percent as demand for aircraft gained, according to the Commerce Department. Excluding transportation, however, orders dropped 1.1 percent, logging the biggest slide since January.
