The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 189.68 points (1.09 percent) to 17,630.27.
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US stocks rose Wednesday after the Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate at near-zero per cent and gave no fresh clues on the timing of a long-awaited rate hike.
Stocks were in positive territory virtually the entire session, but added to gains after the Fed announcement.
“It’s not particularly surprising to see the market acting a little better today as we got significantly oversold”, said Michael James, managing director of equity trading at Wedbush Securities.
James said US equities also benefited from a rally in Chinese stocks and from a rise in oil prices that lifted petroleum-linked stocks.
Intel (Swiss: INTC.SW – news) rose 2.2 percent and Micron Technology (NasdaqGS: MU – news) surged 9.0 percent after the two chipmakers unveiled what they touted as a “breakthrough” memory chip that permits users to store and process huge amounts of data more quickly.
The S&P 500 index is up 8.74 points, or 0.4 percent.
The Nasdaq is up 23.10 points, or 0.5 percent.
US gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 2.3 per cent in the April-June period, the Commerce Department reported, slightly below the 2.5 per cent consensus estimate.
Hong Kong rose 0.47 per cent, or 115.51 points, to 24,619.45, Tokyo ended 0.13 per cent, or 25.98 points, lower at 20,302.91 and Seoul was marginally down, shedding 1.48 points to 2,037.62. The shares gained 3.6 per cent.
Facebook fell 2.1 percent after reporting second-quarter net profit declined nine percent to $715 million despite a 39 percent surge in revenues to $4.04 billion due to a strong performance in mobile advertising.
The Nasdaq is up 353.15 points, or 7.5 percent.
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Whole Foods Market sank 11.6 per cent as it forecast earnings for the current quarter of 34-35 cents per share, three cents below analyst expectations.
