Technology Stocks Help Lift Wall Street

Wall Street extended its biggest winning streak of the year, and stock markets were on track to close higher for a third straight week as positive news from the technology sector kept investors buying on Thursday, The New York Times’s Jack Healy reported.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 174.75 points, or 2.3 percent, to 7,924.56 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 2.3 percent, or 18.98 points, to 832.86.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite rose about 3.8 percent, or 58.05 points, to 1,587, bolstered by Microsoft, Google and Intel. The Nasdaq is now positive for 2009, up 10 points since Jan. 1.
The Dow has rallied 21 percent since hitting a bear market low on March 9 but is down 9.7 percent since the start of the year.
The gains came as the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, asked Congress to pass regulatory reforms. In his opening remarks during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Mr. Geithner called for “new rules of the game,” saying that sweeping changes to the regulatory system could help prevent future financial crises.
A successful auction of seven-year Treasury notes also calmed some concerns after weak demand for debt issues in Britain and the United States the day before.
Prices of longer-term government bonds improved on Thursday after the Treasury auction, a sign that investors were still interested in government debt, despite worries about waning appetites for huge new supplies coming to market.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.74 percent from 2.78 percent on Wednesday, indicating higher demand. The price, which moves in the opposite direction from the yield, rose 13/32 to 100 3/32.
Agricultural producers, builders and computer makers also lifted the broader markets. Banking stocks were mixed as investors weighed broad new regulations on financial firms.
The budding but fragile sense of hope has been driven by recent economic data from the housing market and other sectors, combined with more optimistic profit outlooks from major banks.
After months of bleak economic reports and stark declines in stock markets, analysts say that investors have been searching for any sign that the economic declines might be leveling off.
“Sentiment was so depressed back in early March that it didn’t take all that much to turn the market back up,” Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told The Times. “It really had started to discount further deterioration in the economy and a possible nationalization in the banking system.”
On Thursday the government reported that the economy had deteriorated at a sharper pace in the last three months of 2008, but not by much. The Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product fell at an annual pace of 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter, slightly higher than the previous estimate of 6.2 percent.
And the Labor Department said first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose 8,000 last week to 652,000, setting the stage for another report with high monthly unemployment numbers on April 3.
The government-controlled mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac announced that 30-year fixed mortgage rates fell to 4.85 percent for the week that ended Thursday, a sign that efforts to reduce borrowing costs may be taking root. The Federal Reserve has cut its target interest rate to nearly zero, and announced it would buy $1 trillion in securities to help lower mortgage rates.