US stocks jump on tech rebound
Stocks on Wall Street jumped on Thursday, with a rebound in tech propelling major indices into positive territory and snapping a recent losing streak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.4 percent to 15,055.65, while the broad-based S&P 500 ended the day up 0.9 percent at 4,780.94. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day 0.5 percent higher at 37,468.61. The surge was led by chip-making behemoth Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which saw its share price in New York surge almost 10 percent after beatings earnings expectations. Apple's share price was lifted by 3.3 percent after its stock was upgraded to "buy" by a Bank of America analyst. Earlier Thursday, a senior Federal Reserve official indicated he expected the US central Bank to cut interest rates in the third quarter -- and maybe even earlier than that. "If we continue to see a further accumulation of downside surprises in the data, it's possible for me to get comfortable enough to advocate normalization sooner than the third quarter," Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told a conference in the city. "But the evidence would need to be convincing," added Bostic, who is a voting member of the Fed's rate-setting committee this year. Bostic's comments follow those of other Fed officials, whose remarks appear intended to cool market expectations of an interest rate cut in March. But despite policymakers' recent remarks, futures traders still assign a probability of more than 55 percent that the Fed will cut interest rates in March, according to data from CME Group. (AFP)