Fair or Foul: Dow Jumps 313 Points as Oil, Banks Fly, Still Ends Week in the Red

Stocks surged today as strength in oil and financial stocks helped end their five day losing streak. The S&P 500 rose 2% to 1,864.78 but still finished the week down 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 313.66 points, or 2%, to 15,973.84 but finished the week off 1.4%. The Nasdaq Composite gained 1.7% to 4,337.51 but finished the week with a 0.6% loss. Bloomberg attributes today's big gains to the even larger jump in oil --WTI Crude futures, the U.S. benchmark,climbed 12% to $29.44 a barrel. But I'd give the credit to JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) CEO J amie Dimon , who bought 500,000 shares of the banking giant . That likely helped reverse some of the negative sentiment in the financial sector, which gained 4% today after dropping about 18% this year through yesterday. Shares of JPMorgan Chase climbed 8.3% to $57.46 today, while the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF ( XLF ) rose 4.1% to $20.49. Despite this week's pain, BMO's Brian Belski sees some signs that the market "may be on the verge of stabilizing," including the fact that the correlation between oil and stocks is beginning to weaken. He explains:
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