U.S. stocks rose, as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) rebounded from its biggest weekly drop in four months, after American retail sales and Citigroup Inc. (C)’s earnings topped estimates.
Citigroup gained 2 percent as results benefited from a $582 million tax benefit and a surge in bond-trading revenue. S&P 500 added 0.2 percent to 1,430.67 at 9:31 a.m. in New York.
“The retail sales report looked a little bit better than expected,” Dan Veru, who oversees $3.5 billion as chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management LLC in Fort Lee, New Jersey, said in a phone interview. “The direction of the economic data is positive, but we’re moving at a very slow pace and the market is very fragile to external shocks. The big question regarding earnings is whether expectations have come down enough so that companies can beat guidance.”
The 1.1 percent gain in retail sales followed a revised 1.2 percent increase in August that was the biggest since October 2010 and larger than previously reported, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 77 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.8 percent rise.
Source: Bloomberg
