NEW YORK (AFP) - Wall Street stocks jumped on Thursday (May 26) as strong results from retailers combined with investor bargain-hunting to produce a second straight positive session.
Major indices followed Wednesday's winning day with another upbeat round, posting rare back-to-back gains in 2022.
Besides the strong retailer results, moves by Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways to lift their revenue forecasts, another sign of strong consumer behaviour, also boosted the momentum.
Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare said the rally also represents an inevitable snapback after the S&P 500 fell for seven weeks in a row.
"The market has been deeply sold... and was due for a bounce," he said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average piled on more than 500 points, or 1.6 per cent, to finish the session at 32,637.19.
The broad-based S&P 500 gained 2 per cent to end at 4,057.84, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 2.7 per cent to 11,740.65.
Discount retailer Dollar General and Dollar Tree rose 14 per cent and 21.9 per cent, respectively, after reporting better-than-expected results.
Two other prominent retailers to report were Macy's, up 19.3 per cent, and Williams-Sonoma, up 12.8 per cent.
Chipmaker Broadcom jumped 3.6 per cent after announcing a $61-billion deal to purchase cloud computing firm VMware, which rose 3 per cent.
Another chip company, Nvidia, gained 5.2 per cent picking up strength throughout the day despite lowering its revenue projection.
Analysts said the turnaround in the stock suggested that much of the bad news may have already been priced in, a dynamic that extended to other tech shares Thursday.
