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Wall St opens up as chance of rate hike in 2015 dims

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Reuters
Last Updated : Oct 05 2015 | 9:28 PM IST

By Abhiram Nandakumar

REUTERS - U.S. stocks rose on Monday, with the S&P 500 up for the fifth day, after last week's disappointing jobs report hardened views that the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates this year.

Global stock markets were also higher on the prospect that near-zero interest rates will continue for a while yet.

Friday's U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for September showed that job growth slowed in the last three months.

"September was the best time to raise rates and now it looks like it was the only time they could raise rates," said Mohannad Aama, managing director, Beam Capital Management in New York. The Fed kept its benchmark rate unchanged in September, citing an uncertain global economic outlook and volatile markets.

Aama said the uncertainty over rates was likely to continue as investors look for more consistency in economic reports.

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The Fed has not raised interst rates since since June 2006.

Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Fed, told Reuters on Monday that he still expected the Fed to raise rates this year despite the "weak" jobs report.

However, traders are pricing in only a 31 percent chance of a December hike, down from 44 percent before the release of the jobs report, according to CME Group's FedWatch program.

At 11:01 a.m. ET (1501 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was up 182.06 points, or 1.11 percent, at 16,654.43, the S&P 500 was up 23.31 points, or 1.19 percent, at 1,974.67 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 48.42 points, or 1.03 percent, at 4,756.19.

All 10 major S&P sectors were up, with the energy index's 1.4 percent rise leading the advancers.

Crude oil prices gained more than 2 percent after Russia said it was prepared to discuss the market with other producers. Exxon was up 0.3 percent, while Chevron gained nearly 2 percent.

Energy stocks led a turnaround in the market on Friday after the jobs report had initially pushed stocks lower.

The CBOE Volatility index, known as Wall Street's "fear gauge", fell 4.6 percent to 19.98, a whisker under its long-term average of 20.

With the third-quarter earnings season starting this week, investors are also starting to factor in what is likely to be the biggest fall in profits for S&P 500 companies in six years.

Wall Street expects S&P 500 companies to report a 4.2 percent decline in earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data.

GE gained 4 percent to $26.49 after Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management disclosed a roughly 1 percent stake. The stock gave the biggest boost to the S&P 500.

Twitter was up 2.7 percent at $27.02 after naming co-founder Jack Dorsey as its permanent CEO.

Spark Therapeutics soared 29 percent to $56.67 after the company said its experimental eye drug was successful in a late-stage study.

Alphabet, the restructured Google, rose more than 1 percent on its first day of trading. Each share of the old Google is worth one share of Alphabet.

The pace of growth in the U.S. services sector decelerated in September as new orders and business activity slowed, according to an industry report released on Monday.

The Institute for Supply Management said its services index fell to 56.9 last month from 59 in August.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,570 to 377. On the Nasdaq, 2,054 issues rose and 576 fell.

The S&P 500 index showed eight new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 27 new highs and 20 new lows.

(Reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Ted Kerr)

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First Published: Oct 05 2015 | 9:15 PM IST

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