Thursday's early afternoon trade: Technology, financial stock up

Technology and financial stocks led a rally on Wall Street on Thursday as President Donald Trump toned down his views on attacking Syria and investors focused on what could be the strongest earnings reporting season in seven years. Trump said a possible attack on Syria may not be imminent, easing fears of confrontation with Russia.
That lifted US Treasury yields, leading to a nearly 2 percent increase in the financial sector. "In the past few days, some of the worries that market was fretting about - trade wars, Facebook, missile attacks - all of those have things have been walked back a little bit," said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.
BlackRock gained 2.8 percent after the asset manager's profit rose more than expected. Reports from JPMorgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo will kick off the earnings season in earnest on Friday. Analysts expect quarterly profit for S&P 500 companies to rise 18.5 percent from a year ago, the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
"The market is finally starting to build on itself, earnings are coming. This is the real risk-on type of rally," Antonelli said. At 12:53 pm ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.52 percent at 24,556.29. The S&P 500 gained 1.12 percent to 2,671.73 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.23 percent to 7,156.18.