Stocks closed broadly higher on Wall Street, adding to the market’s gains from a day earlier with solid contributions from Big Tech companies, banks and other sectors.
The S&P 500 rose 1.4%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq each rose 1.6%.
GameStop plunged 60% in the latest wild swing for the stock and several others that have become caught up in a speculative frenzy by online traders seeking to inflict damage on Wall Street hedge funds that bet the stocks would fall. UPS rose after reporting record revenue. Treasury yields rose, as did crude oil prices.
While the broader market was solidly higher, Wall Street was still closely focused on a set of beaten-down companies that have seen their shares surge due to intense online interest.
Earlier Tuesday, GameStop dropped 53.9% to roughly $103 a share, and AMC Entertainment lost 42.3% to $7.70 a share. Both companies have been in the spotlight for more than two weeks as an online community of investors pushed the stocks to astronomical levels.
Trading in those and several other stocks have been restricted by the popular online trading platform Robinhood since last week following the bouts of extreme volatility. Robinhood needed to secure funding in order to meet deposit thresholds required by organizations that handle the trading orders placed by investors on its platform.
Robinhood eased some of the trading limits on GameStop and select other stocks Tuesday. For example, it now allows users to buy up to 100 shares and options contracts in GameStop and 1,250 in AMC. On Monday, the brokerage was limiting users to 5 shares in GameStop and 75 in AMC.
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