NEW YORK — Wall Street rallied Wednesday after better- than-expected quarterly results from JPMorgan Chase and two other Dow Jones industrials raised investors’ hopes that companies and the economy are recovering from the protracted global credit crisis.
The Dow rose more than 250 points as investors shrugged off any concerns about oil passing $115 a barrel for the first time.
A market anxious about corporate earnings and their effects on the economy was relieved after JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola and Intel topped first-quarter projections. The three companies were among dozens posting quarterly results Wednesday.
The battered financial sector advanced after JPMorgan beat analysts’ expectations despite a 50 percent drop in quarterly profit. The nation’s third-biggest bank, which is in the process of acquiring ailing Bear Stearns Cos., reported $2.6 billion of write-downs tied to its loan portfolio.
“You have a combination of JPMorgan and all these other strong earnings out there from a broad range of sectors, and that’s helping the buying we’re seeing,” said Todd Salamone, director of trading and vice president of research at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “There’s an unwinding of all the negativity that we saw ahead of the earnings season.”
Salamone and other analysts have been hoping that strength in corporate earnings would act as a catalyst for a significant rally; the market has managed a choppy ascent since hitting lows in early March.
The Dow rose 256.80, or 2.08 percent, to 12,619.27. The index is up nearly 900 points from a low near 11,740 reached March 10.
Broader market indexes also gained. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 30.28, or 2.27 percent, to 1,364.71; and the Nasdaq composite index advanced 64.07, or 2.80 percent, to 2,350.11.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 21.33, or 3.1 percent, to 713.39.
Gold prices rose, and the dollar was mostly lower against other major currencies.
“The market has been worried about the U.S. consumer being flat on his back for some time, and the high price of oil feeds into that,” said Kevin Gaughan, portfolio manager and equity strategist at Wells Capital Management in Milwaukee.
He suggested investors who had been myopically focusing on the U.S. consumer are rotating back to a more global view and looking toward expanding markets overseas.
“The oil thing is certainly a global constraint on consumer spending, but you have so many more consumers coming into the marketplace via Asia and other places, the numbers there are a huge offset,” Gaughan said.
