Wall Street surges in bargain-hunting rally, oil slides
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks moved sharply higher on Thursday, powered by a rebound in mega-cap growth stocks, while crude oil prices and the dollar slid as a surge of COVID cases in China fueled fears of an economic downturn. All three major U.S. stock indexes rose in a broad-based rally, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq leading the pack. Those gains were extended after a rise in U.S. jobless claims suggested the Federal Reserve's hawkish monetary policy is having its intended effect. "We’re seeing a bit of a rally on the labor numbers this morning anything that suggests an easing in Fed policy," said Greg Bassuk, Chief Executive Officer at AXS Investments in New York. "We didn’t have a Santa Claus rally, so we’re seeing a bit of dip buying as well." Spiking cases of COVID-19 in China, in the wake of Beijing easing its pandemic-curbing restrictions, have soured risk appetite elsewhere, pressuring the dollar and weighing on crude prices. Worries over a looming global recession preoccupied investors on the penultimate trading day of 2022, a year in which central banks' battle against decades-hot inflation and Russia's war on Ukraine helped push all three major stock indexes to their steepest annual percentage losses since 2008, the nadir of the global financial crisis.
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