Stocks jumped Thursday, rallying for the third consecutive session, as investors purchased cheap bank stocks and other shares hit in the sell-off that left the Dow industrials and Standard & Poor's 500 at 12-year lows. The major indexes rose in the previous two sessions after hitting 12-year lows on Monday. Bets that regulators may reinstate a rule that limits short selling—betting that a stock will decline—and talk that a key accounting rule could be suspended or altered helped the advance. Congress held a hearing Thursday on “mark-to-market” accounting. Critics say the accounting rule has hurt the banking sector by forcing companies to write down bad assets and sell them at prices that are too low. Supporters say it provides a clear picture of the assets banks are holding. In economic news, U.S. retail sales fell 0.1 percent in February after falling 1.8 percent the previous month. U.S. jobless claims rose from the previous week, and the number of Americans continuing to receive unemployment benefits rose to a record 5.3 million. A third report showed that U.S. household net worth fell by $11.2 trillion in 2008. Light sweet crude oil for April delivery jumped $4.70—or 11 percent—to $45.27 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The U.S. dollar gained versus the euro and the yen. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 239.66, or 3.5 percent, to 7,170.06. The long-term credit rating of General Electric (GE) was downgraded, but the stock already had declined in anticipation of the downgrade. GE shares rose 13 percent. Pfizer said that a late-stage clinical trial of its cancer drug Sutent has been stopped early after the drug produced a significant benefit in patients with a rare form of the disease. Its shares gained 7.5 percent. The broader S&P 500 index rose 29.38, or 4.1 percent, to 750.74. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 54.46, or 4 percent, to 1,426.10. Shares of CV Therapeutics jumped 30 percent on news that the drugmaker would be sold for $1.4 billion to bio-technology firm Gilead Sciences. The New York Stock Exchange composite index rose 179.61 to 4,684.99. The American Stock Exchange composite index rose 40.54 to 1,306.27. And the Russell 2000 index surged 23.82, or 6.5 percent, to 390.12.
