NEW YORK (voa) – World stock prices surged Tuesday in a sweep from the Asian markets to Wall Street. In many cases, major stock markets rose past key psychological hurdles.
In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average made its seventh biggest point gain ever.
After six losing weeks the Dow capped four days of gains with a resounding 378 point increase. For the first time in about a month the index closed over eight thousand.
Also, for the first time in a month, London’s FTSE Index scaled four thousand with a gain of more than five percent.
Frankfurt’s Dax and Paris’s CAC 40 both topped 3,000 after rallies of roughly 200 points and percentage increases of almost seven percent.The day’s gains started in Tokyo where share prices increased by almost four percent.
The exuberance was powered by a series of positive earnings reports from across a broad spectrum of the U.S. economy. The finance company Citigroup, consumer products firm Johnson and Johnson, and automaker General Motors all reported surprisingly strong profits.
Some analysts are impressed bu the rally has been sustained over four days. Earlier rallies were short lived and analysts say they are hopeful that better days are ahead for stocks.
A key Wall Street tracking firm reports that since hitting five and six-year lows a week ago, U.S. stocks have gained about a trillion dollars in value.
