Investing.com - Wall Street ended higher in another roller-coaster day that saw the Dow Jones down more than 600 points before finishing more than 250 points higher.
The Dow rose 1.14%, while the S&P 500 closed 0.9% higher. The Nasdaq Composite gained 0.38%.
It looked for a while that profit-taking would dent more than half of Wednesday historic gains as weak consumer sentiment numbers spooked traders.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index for December fell to its lowest level in five months.
“The consumer has been a big support for this economy and if all of a sudden the consumer starts to get a little bit anxious and spending slows down, that’s going to have an impact,” David Joy, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial (NYSE:AMP) said.
But the market showed its resilience after midday, rising fairly steadily into the close.
As stocks marched toward the green, the bond market saw a strong selloff as money that had been moving away from risk piled back into equities.
The 10-year yield, which had been down around 2.74% as late at 90 minutes before the close, were at 2.784% when the stock market closed.
Materials stocks were the strong sector, with the S&P 500 Materials index up 1.8%.
Freeport-McMoran (NYSE:FCX), up about 2.6%, and Avery Dennison (NYSE:AVY), up around 2.5%, were the leaders.
3M (NYSE:MMM), IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) powered the Dow’s gains.
Techs faced the most struggle, with semiconductors weighing.
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) lost ground after RBC raised concerns about video card pricing.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.