New York, Aug 30 (IANS): The Wall Street surged Monday as hurricane Irene was not as bad as previously estimated, with Dows jumping over 250 points and Nasdaq increasing over three percent, Xinhua reported.
With Irene caused much less damage than investors had feared investors Monday put their money into the stocks, which had been over sold last week.
Meanwhile, volatility was quite high in August, at least when looking at the Standard & Poor's 500 percentage spread between the intra-day high and low readings for the month. This month's 18.7 percent reading was the widest since the 24.9 percent mark registered during March 2009.
Investors also embraced good news from the Euro zone. Greek stocks jumped nearly 14 percent after Greece's second- and third-largest lenders created the country's largest bank.
On economic front, the US Commerce Department said Monday that consumer spending rose by 0.8 percent in the previous month, the largest amount in five months.
Meanwhile, personal incomes increased 0.3 percent in July, weakest growth in seven months but still higher than expected.
Meanwhile, according to the National Association of Realtors Monday, pending home sales declined 1.3 percent in July after a 2. 4 percent jump the prior month. Investors believed that the reading suggested house market was still weak despite low financing costs and low prices.
On company's front, Bank of America (BOA) Corp. rose 8.12 percent, leading the market with its peers financial shares.
The US largest bank announced Monday that it will sell about 13.1 billion common shares of China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) to generate about $8.3 billion of cash.
The sale accounted for about half of BOA's current hold of CCB's shares. According to the statement the bank issued Monday, after the transaction, BOA will hold approximately five percent of CCB.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 254.71 points, or 2.26 percent, to 11,539.25. The S&P's 500 jumped 33.28 points, or 2.83 percent, to 1,210.08. The Nasdaq Composite Index surged 82.26 points, or 3.32 percent, to 2,562.11.