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Investors believing Wall Street is on the verge of a year-end rally piled into the market Tuesday, brushing off more weak economic data while they scarfed up stocks and propelled the Dow Jones industrials up 300 points to its highest close in four weeks.
It was the biggest Election Day rally for the Dow, which rose 3.28 percent and topped the 1.2 percent gain seen in 1984 when Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale. Before 1980, the market was closed on Election Day.
Some analysts said the market rose on relief that the presidential election was about to be decided. But others said investors were anticipating a year-end recovery from Wall Street’s huge sell-off and bought to be sure they didn’t miss out on its start.
The Dow rose 305.45, or 3.28 percent, to 9,625.28. The Dow last closed above 9,500 on Oct. 6, when it finished at 9,955.50.
The broader indexes also rose. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index gained 39.45, or 4.08 percent, to 1,005.75, its first close over the 1,000 mark since Oct. 13.
U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings increased 40 percent nationwide in October compared to October 2007, the American Bankruptcy Institute announced Tuesday. The number exceeded 100,000 for the first time since October 2005, when a flood of cases were filed to beat an impending change in bankruptcy law.
October filing data for the Fort Wayne Division wasn’t available Tuesday, said Larry Greer, administrative services manager for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Indiana. But he expects the October numbers will exceed the 399 bankruptcy cases filed in the Fort Wayne Division in September.
So far this year, July saw the most cases filed in the division – 493. The low point for the year was in January with 248 new cases. From January through September, 3,349 bankruptcy cases were filed in the Fort Wayne Division.
Dell Inc. has asked employees to consider taking unpaid vacation days or severance packages to help the PC maker cut costs.
In a memo posted to a company blog, Chief Executive Michael Dell also announced a hiring freeze and said the company would use fewer contract workers.
Jess Blackburn, a Dell spokesman, said Tuesday that the new moves are intended to help Dell reach its goal of cutting $3 billion in annual expenses over the next few years. Corporate spending on information technology is softening, as is consumer spending on PCs in developed countries.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is closing down a 75-person group that traded the bank’s own money in everything from stocks to commodities, a person familiar with the move said on Tuesday.
The stand-alone proprietary trading desk had worked separately from traders doing similar work within various business lines.
Although most of the traders from the group will be laid off, some will be shifted into similar positions within the bank, said the person who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank with about 228,000 employees, and rivals have been paring staff after suffering major write-downs from the financial crisis.
