Thursday's early afternoon trade: Tech, bank stocks lead Wall Street higher

Wall Street rose in early afternoon trading on Thursday, reversing from earlier losses, as strong reports from Facebook and Microsoft led the technology sector higher and hawkish comments from the Federal Reserves lifted bank stocks. Facebook rose 4.3 percent after the company said it expects ad sales to rise despite a dip in usage on the social media network.
Microsoft was up 0.88 percent, reversing from a decline in premarket trading, after beating Wall Street's profit forecast on growth in its cloud computing business. The technology sector was up 0.53 percent. Its gainers included Apple, which is to report earnings after the bell, along with Alphabet and Amazon .
Strong reports from S&P 500 companies so far have pushed up analysts' fourth-quarter profit growth estimate to 13.7 percent, from 12 percent at the start of the month, according to Thomson Reuters data. At 12:32 p.m. ET (1732 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 141.57 points, or 0.54 percent, at 26,290.96, the S&P 500 was up 9.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 2,833.73 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 18.31 points, or 0.25 percent, at 7,429.79.
The market opened lower, a day after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged, but raised its inflation outlook for the year and flagged "further gradual" rate hikes. Currently the market has priced in three rate hikes for 2018. Another report showed US factory activity slowed in January as new orders fell.
The economic data-heavy week will culminate in the nonfarm payrolls data on Friday. Other notable stock movers included eBay, which jumped 14.1 percent after reporting a strong holiday quarter and saying it would eventually move away from PayPal as its main payments partner. PayPal fell 6.2 percent. UPS dropped 5.8 percent after the world's largest package delivery company reported a fourth-quarter net profit that was hurt by additional costs.