Wall Street gains on earnings, recovery in bank stocks

By Amy Caren Daniel

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose in a broad rally on Tuesday after four straight days of losses on a strong set of earnings from retailers and as bank stocks rebounded after the Turkish lira snapped a three-week slide.

All 11 major S&P sectors were trading higher, with financials rising 0.63 pct.

Shares of U.S. lenders - Citigroup, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs - rose between 0.20 percent and 1 percent.

The KBW bank index gained 1.02 percent, bouncing back from a 3 percent loss raked in over three sessions as investors fretted about banks' exposure to Turkey.

The lira recovered after Turkey's central bank moved to ease pressure on the currency, triggering a surge of as much as 7 percent to 6.4 per U.S. dollar.

"In the absence of bad news, markets will move higher," said Steve Chiavarone, vice president and portfolio manager at Federated Investors in New York.

"The markets that should be moving higher because the fundamentals look really, really good and that is unlikely to change anytime soon."

Among the encouraging earnings reports was Home Depot, whose shares climbed 1 percent after the home improvement retailer beat analysts' quarterly sales estimates despite signs of a slowdown in the housing market.

The report from Home Depot, a member of Dow Jones Industrial Average, sent the shares of smaller rival Lowe's higher by 1.2 percent.

At 12:26 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 112.79 points, or 0.45 percent, at 25,300.49 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 53.20 points, or 0.68 percent, at 7,872.91.

The S&P 500 was up 18.42 points, or 0.65 percent, at 2,840.35, just 1.1 percent shy of the record levels hit in late January.

Technology shares rose 0.66 percent and was the biggest boost to the benchmark index, led by Microsoft's 1.1 percent rise.

Also lifting the sector was Nvidia, which gained 2 percent, after the company rolled out its newest generation of chip technology.

Tapestry jumped 13 percent, the most on the S&P index, after strong sales of its Kate Spade handbags helped the company's full-year forecast top analysts' expectations.

Advance Auto Parts rose 7.7 percent after the company beat quarterly profit estimates and announced a new share buyback program.

The second-quarter earnings season is tapering down. Of the 458 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported so far, 79 percent have beaten analysts' estimates, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.86-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.86-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded 22 new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 74 new highs and 61 new lows.

(Reporting by Amy Caren Daniel in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Anil D'Silva)