NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street posted its first weekly gain in more than a month as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke raised hopes for more stimulus for the economy at the U.S. central bank's September meeting.

Initially stocks fell after Bernanke stopped short of describing detailed plans to strengthen the ailing economy. But the market turned higher, led by technology shares, as investors concluded the Fed was leaving the door open for action even though many traders believe it has limited power to pull the economy out of a rut.

The CBOE Volatility Index or VIX (.VIX), Wall Street's "fear gauge," retreated after days of uncertainty on what Bernanke would say. The VIX slid 10.2 percent to 35.69, after earlier falling as much as 14 percent to a session low at 34.33.

"He didn't give the market the green light for QE3. He also didn't give the market the red light for QE3," said Kevin Caron, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus in Florham Park, New Jersey, referring to a possible third round of quantitative easing.

"By implying that inflation is viewed as not a concern, it leaves the possibility for something down the road," he said.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) ended up 134.72 points, or 1.21 percent, at 11,284.54. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was up 17.53 points, or 1.51 percent, at 1,176.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was up 60.22 points, or 2.49 percent, at 2,479.85.

For the week, the Dow rose 4.3 percent, the S&P gained 4.7 percent and the Nasdaq rose 5.9 percent.

Bernanke, speaking in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said the central bank's policy panel would meet for two days in September instead of the scheduled one-day meeting to discuss any more stimulus.

While expressing long-term optimism, Bernanke said the Fed found recent developments troubling and saw a low inflation as staying low.

Shares of property insurers were mixed after falling earlier in the week on worries that severe damage from Hurricane Irene would result in substantial claims.

Travelers Cos Inc (TRV.N) edged up 0.6 percent to $48.29 after earlier hitting a two-year low. Allstate (ALL.N) was up 0.1 percent at $24.45, having also hit a two-year low. Insurers typically fall before severe weather events and rally later.

Chubb Corp (CB.N) gained 1.2 percent to $59.38.

As Irene bore down on North Carolina, tens of thousands of people evacuated and East Coast cities, including New York, braced for a weekend hit from the powerful storm.

NYSE Euronext (NYX.N) said the New York Stock Exchange plans to open for trading as usual next week, but because of the possibility of flooding, a decision will not be made until Saturday or Sunday.

Technology stocks led the advance, with Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Intel Corp (INTC.O) among the Dow's top gainers.

Cisco shares rose 1.6 percent to $15.32, while Microsoft shares added 2.8 percent to $25.25, and Intel Corp advanced 1.8 percent to $19.77.

The S&P information technology index (.GSPT) shot up 2.3 percent, making it the S&P 500's best-performing sector.

"It's a pretty broad market rally right now, but tech has been really hammered in the selloff, so you see that leading the rally," said Gary Wedbush, head of trading at regional investment bank Wedbush Morgan in Los Angeles.

Tiffany and Co (TIF.N) rose 9.3 percent to $69.01 after it raised its full-year profit outlook.

About 7.9 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, matching the year-to-date average of 7.9 billion.

On the New York Stock Exchange, advancers beat decliners by a ratio of about 5 to 1. On Nasdaq, about 4 shares rose for every 1 that fell.

(Additional reporting by Ashley Lau, Editing by Kenneth Barry)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rallied on Tuesday in a volatile session as investors struggled to decipher the Federal Reserve’s signals on the economy after a dizzying two-week slide.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 429.69 points, or 3.97 percent, at 11,239.54, based on the latest figures. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was up 53.11 points, or 4.74 percent, at 1,172.57. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 124.83 points, or 5.29 percent, at 2,482.52.

(Reporting by Angela Moon, Editing by Kenneth Barry)

NEW YORK – Fear has taken over on Wall Street.

The Dow Jones industrials fell 634.76 points, the first trading day since Standard & Poor’s downgraded American debt. . It was the sixth-worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst drop since December 2008. Every stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index declined Monday.

But the S&P downgrade wasn’t the only catalyst Monday. Investors worried about the slowing U.S. economy, escalating debt problems threatening Europe and the prospect that fear in the markets would reinforce itself, as it did during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

“`What’s rocking the market is a growth scare,” said Kathleen Gaffney, co-manager of the $20 billion Loomis Sayles bond fund. “The market is under a lot of stress that really has little to do with the downgrade.” Instead, Gaffney said, investors are focused on worries about another recession and “how Europe and the U.S. are going to work their way out of a high debt burden” if economic growth remains slow.

The Vix, a measure of market volatility and fear among investors, shot up 50 percent. That was its steepest rise since February 2007.

Investors desperately looked for safe places to put their money and settled on U.S. government debt — even though it was the target of the downgrade Friday, when S&P removed the United States from its list of the lowest-risk countries.

The price of Treasurys rose sharply, and yields, which move in the opposite direction from price, plunged. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.34 percent from 2.57 percent Friday. That matches its low for the year, reached last week. Before last Friday, there was widespread concern that a downgrade would push yields up and increase borrowing costs for the government, businesses and consumers.

“This is largely a flight to safety,” said Thomas Simons, money market economist with Jefferies & Co. “The bond market is really trading off of what’s going on in the stock market.” Money flowed out of stocks and into Treasurys.

Gold set a record. It rose $61.40 an ounce to settle at $1,713.20.

Crude oil, natural gas and other commodities fell sharply on worries that a weaker global economy will mean less demand. Oil fell 6.4 percent to $81.31 per barrel, its lowest price of the year.

Fear is spreading quickly through the market, said Dimitre Genov, senior portfolio manager with Artio Global Investors. “It’s becoming a vicious cycle and could feed into consumers reducing their demand as well.”

The Dow was down 5.5 percent a 10,809.85. The sharp drop extended Wall Street’s almost uninterrupted decline since late July, when the Dow was flirting with 13,000. It fell below 11,000 for the first time since November.

The S&P 500 fell 79.92, or 6.7 percent, to 1,119.46. The Nasdaq composite index fell 174.72, or 6.9 percent, to 2,357.69.

Trading volume was the highest since September 2008 and the fourth-highest on record. A total of 9.9 billion shares traded, and about 70 stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange.

Stock markets in Asia began Monday’s global rout. The main stock index fell almost 4 percent in South Korea and more than 2 percent in Japan. European markets opened later and fell, too, with Germany down 5 percent and France 4.7 percent.

In the U.S., stocks fell even as Moody’s, another major credit rating agency, stood by its top rating of Aaa for the United States. It said it could downgrade the U.S. if it doesn’t cut its deficit, “but it is early to conclude that such measures will not be forthcoming.”

Financial markets also did not appear comforted by an afternoon statement by President Barack Obama, who said Washington needs more “common sense and compromise” to tame its debt.

“Markets will rise and fall,” he said. “But this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.”

S&P, in its downgrade, criticized dysfunction in the American political system. The downgrade wasn’t a total surprise but came when investors were already feeling nervous about the U.S. economy and European debt, among other problems.

Last week, the Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 700 points. That was its biggest weekly point loss since 2008, during the financial crisis. Counting Monday, the Dow has dropped in 10 of the last 12 trading days. It is down more than 1,900 points, or 15 percent, since July 21.

The Russell 2000 index of small stocks has now lost nearly 25 percent from its most recent high on April 29. A decline of 10 percent or more is considered to be a correction. And a drop of 20 percent or more is said to be the start of a bear market.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 are both down about 18 percent since the end of April. The Dow is down 16 percent.

The last bear market for the S&P 500 ran from October 2007 until March 2009. The index lost 57 percent of its value.

Despite the slide the last two and a half weeks, the S&P 500 index, at 1,119, is 7 percent higher than its close of 1,047 late last August, just before the Federal Reserve announced a program to support the economy. And the Dow’s percentage drop of 5.5 didn’t make the list of its 20 worst days.

S&P on Monday downgraded mortgage lenders Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other agencies linked to long-term U.S. debt. Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of all U.S. mortgages. Their downgrade could eventually mean higher mortgage rates.

Worries about weaker profits that could result from a slowing economy have slammed the financial industry since late July. As a group, financial stocks in the S&P 500 index fell 10 percent on Monday to their lowest level since July 2009.

Bank of America plunged 20.3 percent, to $6.51, after AIG filed suit against the bank. The insurer alleged Bank of America sold it overvalued mortgage-backed securities. The bank denied the allegations. Its stock is down 51 percent this year, from $13.34.

Stocks in other industries whose profits are closely tied to the strength of the economy also fell sharply. Energy stocks in the S&P 500 fell 8.3 percent, for example.

The smallest losses came in safer industries such as consumer staples whose profits tend to be steady, regardless of the economy. Even in a bad economy people will still buy things like toothpaste and bread.

The Vix, a measure of fear among investors, is up more than 90 percent this month. The index shows how worried investors are that the S&P 500 will drop over the next 30 days. It does that by measuring prices for stock options that investors can buy to help protect their portfolios.

Investors are also worried that Italy and Spain could become the next European countries to have trouble repaying their debts. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have already received bailout loans because of Europe’s 21-month-old debt crisis.

The fears have pushed investors to shun Spanish and Italian bonds, which have led to higher yields and in even higher borrowing costs for the two countries.

The European Central Bank stepped in Monday and bought billions of euros worth of their bonds. The move helped to lower yields on Spanish and Italian bonds, at least temporarily.

Seeking to avert panic spreading across financial markets, the finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 industrial and developing nations issued a joint statement Monday saying they were committed to taking all necessary measures to support financial stability and growth.

“We will remain in close contact throughout the coming weeks and cooperate as appropriate, ready to take action to ensure financial stability and liquidity in financial markets,” they said.

Worries about the U.S. economic recovery have been building since the government said that economic growth was far weaker in the first half of 2011 than economists expected.

The economy grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate from April through June, below economists’ expectations. It expanded at just an 0.4 percent rate in the first quarter. The first half of 2011 was the slowest since the end of the recession.

Then reports showed that the manufacturing and services industries barely grew in July. Job growth was better than economists expected last month. But the 117,000 jobs created in July was still well below the 215,000 that employers added in February, March and April, on average.

The Federal Reserve will meet on Tuesday, but economists don’t expect much to come out of the meeting. The central bank’s key interest rate is already at a record of nearly zero, where it has been since 2008.

The Fed has also already said that it plans to keep rates low for “an extended period.” Chairman Ben Bernanke said last month that the Fed could step in to help the economy if it further weakened.

Fears about a weaker U.S. economy have overshadowed the profit growth that companies have reported for the second quarter. For the 441 companies in the S&P 500 that have already reported, earnings rose 12 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. Revenue growth has also topped 10 percent for the first time in a year.

____

AP Business Writers Matthew Craft, David K. Randall and Daniel Wagner contributed to this report.

NEW YORK – Bankrate Inc.’s stock declined more than 4 percent in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The finance data publisher from North Palm Beach, Fla., had raised approximately $187.5 million before expenses from its initial public offering.

The shares dropped 63 cents, or 4.2 percent, to $14.37 from its offering price in morning trading Friday.

The offering was priced at $15 per share, the midpoint of its expected range. Bankrate had indicated in a regulatory filing that it planned to offer 12.5 million shares of common stock at a price of $14 to $16 apiece.

An additional 7.5 million shares are being offered by company stockholders. Bankrate won’t receive any proceeds from the sale of those shares.

The stock is trading under the “RATE” ticker symbol.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – LinkedIn Corp’s shares more than doubled in their public trading debut on Thursday, evoking memories of the investor love affair with Internet stocks during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

Shares of the online professional social networking company soared as much as 171 percent, or $76.97, to $121.97 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange — far exceeding the $45 initial public offering price.

The stampede brings the valuation of LinkedIn, which less than a decade ago was no more than an ambitious idea and a computer in one man’s living room, to as high as $11 billion, depending on the stock price at the moment.

Just two weeks ago, LinkedIn proposed a price range for the IPO that valued it at just over $3 billion.

By way of comparison, LinkedIn’s current market value of $9.8 billion is larger than Southwest Airlines Co NYSE Euronext, Clorox.

LinkedIn is the first prominent U.S. social networking company to publicly test just how hungry investors are for anything social media-related on the Web such as Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga.

Such exuberant debut trading in recent years has been the prerogative of Chinese Internet stocks, unmatched by their U.S. peers. LinkedIn is the first U.S. Web company to replicate the jump, marking the biggest first-day price jump since shares of Baidu Inc, a Chinese Internet search engine, rose 354 percent in their Nasdaq debut in 2005.

Like Facebook, Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn allows users to create profile pages displaying a picture and details about themselves.

While Facebook often has more informal profiles that may include a photo album from a recent trip, for example, LinkedIn is seen as the place for a professional persona. The profile pages are basically an online database of electronic resumes.

The company’s 2010 net income was $3.4 million attributable to common stockholders on net revenue of $243.1 million.

As of March 31, LinkedIn had 1,288 employees and 102 million registered members. Based on LinkedIn’s current market value, each of those users is valued at about $96.

MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES, OH MY!

LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner — a newly minted millionaire — shrugged off the trading craze or even worries that the pricing underestimated the appetite for the stock.

“Speaking for myself, personally I’m not even thinking twice about where the price is today and leaving money on the table or even anything remotely along those lines,” he said, adding that the stock “will take care of itself.”

He also cautioned against viewing LinkedIn as a proxy for other potential big-name IPOs, saying those stocks would also be driven by their fundamental value — which are, in turn, far from echoes of the dot-com bubble.

Weiner, who sold about 5 percent of his holdings in the offering, made $5.2 million on the IPO. Based on the latest stock price, his remaining stake in LinkedIn is worth almost $230 million.

LinkedIn’s co-founder and ex-PayPal executive Reid Hoffman made $5.2 million selling less than 1 percent of his shares. His remaining stake in the company — 21.7 percent of the voting power — is now worth nearly $2 billion.

The company raised $352.8 million on Wednesday by selling 8 percent of the company, or 7.84 million shares, for $45 apiece. The company increased its anticipated price range by $10 on Tuesday to $42 to $45 per share.

From the midpoint of the price range to the current price, shares have more than tripled. Bankers typically try to price an IPO so that the stock rises about 15 percent on the first day of trading — enough to reward investors who made a bet, but not so much that the company and its selling shareholders feel that they could have made substantially more.

“The public market demand turns out to be even stronger, substantially stronger than private market transactions have been implying,” said Jay Ritter, IPO expert and professor of finance at University of Florida.

Private-market trading of LinkedIn shares before the IPO gave the company a valuation of about $3 billion, he said.

The company’s shares were sold at about 17.5 times its 2010 sales. By comparison, Google Inc’s shares are valued at about six times 2010 sales.

Renren Inc shares rose 4.38 percent while MySpace parent News Corp rose 2 percent. Google Inc, owner of YouTube, was little changed.

Underwriters on the IPO were led by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Alina Selyukh; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Maureen Bavdek and Robert MacMillan)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. crude futures extended gains to more than $3 on Wednesday, edging above $100 a barrel after a weekly government report showed crude stocks fell slightly in the United States last week as refinery utilization rose.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, June crude rose $3.17 to $100.08 a barrel by 11:44 a.m. EDT (1544 GMT), trading between $97.46 and $100.10.

(Reporting by Robert Gibbons)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street fell more than 1 percent on Monday as sovereign debt fears on both sides of the Atlantic and monetary tightening by China hurt the outlook for global economic growth.

However equities ended off their lows in a heavily traded session as some analysts said the sell-off was overdone, though the decline was the largest in a month.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) dropped 140.24 points, or 1.14 percent, to 12,201.59. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX) dropped 14.55 points, or 1.10 percent, to 1,305.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) dropped 29.27 points, or 1.06 percent, to 2,735.38.