US stocks delivered their largest rally in two weeks, adding more than 6 per cent Thursday to the three major indices and erasing more than 4-per-cent losses booked Wednesday, according to dpa. The reversals were fuelled by a grab for cheap energy shares. Beleaguered real-estate companies got new wind after CB Richard Ellis Inc raised cash in a share sale and gained 43 per cent, Bloomberg financial news service reported. "Bottom line, stocks are incredibly cheap," Wayne Wilbanks, chief investment officer of Wilbanks Smith & Thomas Asset Management in Norfolk, Virginia, was quoted as saying. "Volatility accelerates when markets reach bottoms. We could be at 10,000 in a day and a half, the way the market is right now." On Wednesday, stock indices plunged as the US Treasury Department said it will prop up consumer lending as part of the emergency financial bail-out - an indication that the US government was opening a new front in the campaign to wrestle the financial crisis to the ground. Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped Wednesday to a near five- year low, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index reached a five-year low. Foreign stock markets on Thursday showed evidence of recovery, with France's CAC 40 adding 1.10 per cent, Germany's DAX gaining 0.62 per cent and Spain's IBEX 35 climbing 1.08 per cent. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 552.59 points, or 6.67 per cent, to 8,835.25. The The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 58.99 points, or 6.92 per cent, to 911.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 97.49 points, or 6.5 per cent, to 1,596.7. The US currency fell to 78.236 euro cents from 79.987 euro cents on Wednesday. Against the Japanese currency, the dollar rose to 97.655 yen from 95.015 yen on Wednesday.
