US stocks rose on Thursday as trading returned to normal at the New York Stock Exchange and Beijing's efforts to halt a rout in Chinese stocks lifted markets around the world. US stocks had fallen sharply on Wednesday as market turmoil in China, a rout in commodity prices, the Greek crisis and a major outage on the New York Stock Exchange spooked investors.
While the NYSE resumed operations late in the trading day on Wednesday, all eyes were on the exchange to see if its systems would withstand heavy opening trade volumes. "NYSE open for trading, business as usual," the exchange tweeted shortly after the opening bell. NYSE accounted for about 13.4 percent of US stocks last month.
Boosting investor sentiment, minutes from the US Federal Reserve's June meeting indicated that the central bank needed to see more signs of a strengthening economy before raising rates. At 10:47 am ET the Dow Jones industrial average was up 152.33 points, or 0.87 percent, at 17,667.75, the S&P 500 was up 16.91 points, or 0.83 percent, at 2,063.59 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 48.80 points, or 0.99 percent, at 4,958.56.