Housing deal, hope for insurers lift Wall Street

NEW YORK -- Wall Street broke a two-day slide Wednesday as investors cherry-picked insurance, technology and homebuilding stocks on bits of welcome news for those industries.

But jitters about weak first-quarter corporate profit reports and a downbeat assessment of the economy from the Federal Reserve held the market's gains in check.

Concerns over quarterly results and company forecasts for the remainder of the year have rattled the market this week, saddling the Dow Jones industrials with a nearly 3 percent loss over Monday and Tuesday.

But analysts also said some time-out was necessary after the Dow put up its biggest four-week surge since 1933. Analysts aren't ready to call the end of the rally but trading likely will remain volatile as investors look to corporate reports and forecasts for signs of where the economy is headed.

"We're braced for a lousy earnings season because we haven't had a lot of guidance," said Frederic H. Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Ore. "We're in a volatile bottoming process."

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrials rose 47.55, or 0.6 percent, to 7,837.11. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 9.61, or 1.2 percent, to 825.16, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 29.05, or 1.9 percent, to 1,590.66.