NEW YORK -- Blue-chip stocks rallied in the last hour of trading to match a powerful surge in technology stocks that had the Nasdaq composite index soaring all day. Dow up 14.67;
Nasdaq gains 60The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 14.67 at 9,355.22 after erasing an earlier loss of as much as 133 points. The Nasdaq composite gained 59.97, more than 2.5 percent, at 2,408.17.
Advancers beat decliners by 1,530 to 1,522 on the New York Stock Exchange, with 519 unchanged. NYSE volume totaled 786.72 million shares vs. 792.62 million yesterday.
The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 7.63 to close at 1,250.89. The NYSE composite index rose 1.44 to 594.83, but the American Stock Exchange composite index fell 1.68 to 707.61. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 3.84 to 430.89.
The price of the Treasury's main 30-year bond was off 13/32 point, or $4.06 per $1,000 in face value, by late afternoon, while its yield rose to 5.14 percent from 5.12 percent late Friday. The U.S. financial markets were closed yesterday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
Blue chip stocks were hampered for most of the day by fears that Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan might attempt to cool the market's recent advances when he testifies tomorrow before the House Ways and Means Committee.
Investors remember well the chairman's "irrational exuberance" speech in December of 1996, when Greenspan suggested that stocks were trading at values far too rich to be justified by earnings projections and general outlook on the economy. But after stumbling nervously, the market kept rising.