NEW YORK — A weekend of exuberant holiday shopping in the U.S. and radical proposals for stanching Europe’s debt crisis sent stocks soaring Monday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index broke a seven-day losing streak.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 291 points, its biggest gain in a month. The Dow plunged 564 points last week on fear that Europe’s debt crisis was spreading to large countries such as Spain, Italy and even Germany.
Markets in Europe also surged as leaders there discussed previously unthinkable approaches for containing the region’s debt troubles, such as joint bond sales and a tighter fiscal union. France’s CAC-40 jumped 5.5 percent. Indexes in Germany and Italy rose 4.6 percent. The battered euro rose against the dollar.
Retail stocks spiked after initial reports showed a record number of shoppers hit the mall or bought gifts online during the holiday weekend. Macy’s Inc. rose 4.7 percent, and Best Buy Co. rose 3.4 percent. Thanksgiving weekend is a make-or-break time for many retailers. For the past six years, Black Friday has been the biggest retail sales day of the year.
European finance ministers discussed radical measures to stop the debt crisis from destroying the 17-nation currency union. In a sign of how desperate the situation has become, one proposal being discussed ahead of a financial summit today calls for having nations cede control over their budgets to a central European authority. Profligate borrowing and spending by Greece and other countries helped trigger the 2-year-old crisis.
Another plan calls for Europe’s most stable economies such as Germany, France and Austria to jointly sell bonds to provide assistance to the region’s most indebted members.
The Dow soared 291.23 points, or 2.6 percent, to 11,523.01. The S&P 500 rose 33.88, or 2.9 percent, to 1,192.55. The Nasdaq composite rose 85.83, or 3.5 percent, to 2,527.34.
As the threat of an imminent meltdown in Europe ebbed, U.S. investors focused on a strong weekend of holiday shopping. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to early estimates by the National Retail Federation. They spent more too: The average holiday shopper spent $398.62 over the weekend, up from $365.34 a year ago.
The retail numbers added to a growing set of indicators, including steady drops in the number of new applications for unemployment benefits, that suggest the U.S. economy is continuing to heal.
