A Three-Month Win Streak for Stocks
U.S. stocks rose last week, producing the first three-month gain for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index since 2007, as commodities posted the biggest monthly rally since 1974 on bets that an economic recovery will boost demand for fuel, metals and crops.</br></br>Cabot Oil & Gas rose 18 percent, leading energy shares 5 percent higher as crude completed its biggest monthly gain in a decade. CIT Group and SanDisk led financial and technology firms to the steepest advances among 10 industries in the S&P 500 as consumer confidence climbed the most since 2003.</br></br>"The summer doldrums are being washed away by optimism that the economy didn't slip into a permanent black hole," said Diane Garnick, the New York-based investment strategist at Invesco. "Prices on inputs to business such as oil and natural resources are rising on the hopes of an economic turnaround."</br></br>The S&P 500 rallied 3.6 percent, to 919.14, continuing a rebound from a 5 percent loss two weeks earlier that was the steepest weekly loss since March. The Dow Jones industrial average added 223.01 points, or 2.7 percent, to finish at 8500.33. The Nasdaq composite index added 4.9 percent, to close at 1774.33.</br></br>U.S. Steel surged 16 percent and Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold gained 13 percent, leading gains among raw-materials producers.