Dow Jumps as Lawmakers Step Up Efforts to Get Stimulus Bill Over the Line

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – Wall Street jumped on Wednesday as signs of progress on Capitol Hill over the next coronavirus fiscal stimulus package lifted investor sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.24 %, or 331 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.66%, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped 0.52%.

With the clock ticking down on the congressional summer recess set for the end of this week, a sense of urgency to get the coronavirus relief package over the line has set in, with lawmakers on both sides said to have made modest concessions.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that he was "prepared to support" federal unemployment benefits being brought back at that $600/week level – a key sticking point that has been holding up progress.

Value stocks, which tend to perform well when the economy picks up, led the broader market higher, with materials, industrials, financials and energy up more than 1%.

Energy was rising on oil prices amid data showing weekly a fall weekly U.S. crude stockpiles.

Crude inventories fell by 7.4 million barrels last week, a larger draw than the 3 million barrels expected, sending oil prices nearly 3% higher.

Financials were boosted by an 8% surge in Square (NYSE:SQ) after the payments company delivered better-than-expected quarterly results thanks to strong growth in its consumer payments app.

Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS), meanwhile, jumped 9% after revealing a surprise fiscal third quarter profit on cost cuts and strong growth in its streaming business. The company also said the remake of Mulan would be available to stream in September.

Elsewhere on the earnings front, Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) fell more than 7% after reporting mixed results as earnings were in-line, but revenue fell short of estimates. The company also flagged higher than expected costs and weakness in its food service channel.

"(T)he quality of results was weaker than we expected with the exclusion of $7.4M of COVID costs and donations and U.S. Foodservice channel sales down 59% with a slow exit rate for sequential recovery," Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN) said in a note.

In tech, the "Fab 5" pared losses to end mostly higher.  Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), while Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) as lower.

On the economic front, U.S. services activity in July topped estimates, but the labor market continues to show signs of weakness ahead of the nonfarm payrolls report later this week.

The U.S. private sector added 167,000 jobs in July, short of forecasts of 1.5 million jobs.

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