Wall Street ends first half of 2012 with broad rally

14:47, 30 June 2012

NEW YORK. June 30. KAZINFORM Wall Street ended the first half of the year with broad rally on Friday as market sentiment was boosted by the European Union's progress on tackling the region' s debt crisis, Kazinform has learned from Xinhua.

When the market closed, the Dow Jones industrial average rallied 277.83 points, or 2.20 percent, to 12,880.09 while the Standard & Poor's 500 surged 33.12 points, or 2.49 percent, to 1, 362.16, posing their biggest gains since June 6.

The Nasdaq Composite Index soared 85.56 points, or 3 percent, to 2,935.05, its best day of the year.

With Friday's rally, all three major indexes were higher for the week and rallied nearly 4 percent for the month.

For the past six months, the blue-chip Dow gained 5.4 percent. The broader S&P 500 jumped 8.3 percent while the tech-heavy Nasdaq rallied 12.7 percent.

Friday's broad rally came after the EU summit ended with several concrete steps, short-term and long, trying to stem the continent's spiraling debt crisis.

Investors were especially pleased to hear that the eurozone's two bailout funds, known by their acronyms EFSF/ESM, will be able to recapitalize banks directly, rather than first handing over the money to the government of the country where they are based. The move was believed very effective in short term as it can stop banks from piling debt onto already stressed governments.

Meanwhile, the European Union decided to allow countries that comply with its budget policies to access the rescue funds to support their sovereign bond markets.

EU Economy