Wall Street closes at multi-year highs

NEW YORK: Stocks closed at multi-year highs on Thursday, with the SandP
500 ending at its highest level since before the collapse of Lehman
Brothers as investors hailed a new European bond-buying program aimed
at stemming the region's debt crisis.

Sentiment was also boosted
by stronger-than-expected data on the U.S. services sector and labor
market, which was especially notable ahead of Friday's non-farm August
payrolls report.

The rally was broad, with more than
three-fourths of stocks listed on both the New York Stock Exchange and
Nasdaq ending higher. Materials, financials and industrials - groups
tied to the pace of economic growth - led with gains of more than 2
percent, giving the Dow index its biggest daily gain in two months and
helping the Nasdaq advance to its highest since 2000.

"As clouds
related to Europe start to drift off, there's no question that there's
still juice left from here," said Richard Weiss, a Mountain View,
California-based senior money manager at American Century Investments,
which has about US$120 billion in assets under management. "That
equities are up double digits year-to-date doesn't deter us from
remaining overweight on them for the foreseeable future."

Tech
shares helped lift the Nasdaq in its best daily performance since July
27. SanDisk Corp climbed 8.4 percent to US$44.01 and Micron Technology
Inc added 7.8 percent to US$6.68. The Dow was lifted by Walt Disney Co,
which advanced 2.1 percent to an all-time closing high of US$51.86.

ECB
President Mario Draghi, backing up his July pledge to do whatever it
takes to preserve the euro, said the central bank's plan for
potentially unlimited bond-buying would address bond market distortions
and "unfounded" fears of investors about the survival of the euro.

"We
think this is a credible plan to addressing the issue, and while there
are still political hurdles, we expect those will be addressed," said
Alec Young, global equity strategist at SandP Equity Research in New
York.

U.S. companies added staff in August at the fastest clip
in five months, according to the better-than-expected ADP report, while
a gauge of employment in the service sector also improved more than had
been anticipated. New weekly claims for jobless benefits fell to the
lowest level in a month.

Even with Thursday's encouraging
numbers, economists think the payroll report will show only modest
hiring, at 125,000 new jobs, and the unemployment rate holding steady
at 8.3 percent.

"ADP doesn't correlate perfectly with payrolls,
but people are feeling better about the jobs market these days," Young
said. "There was confidence we would see jobs in the mid-100's even
before this."

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 244.52
points, or 1.87 percent, to 13,292.00. The Standard and Poor's 500
Index was up 28.68 points, or 2.04 percent, at 1,432.12-- its highest
level since May 2008, before the financial crisis began to gather
steam. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 65.12 points, or 2.12 percent,
at 3,134.39.

Equities have rallied in recent months on growing
expectations for ECB action. The SandP is up about 8 percent since the
start of July.

The ECB's program, which Germany's Bundesbank is
known to have opposed, would focus on bonds maturing within three years
and was strictly within the ECB's mandate. Draghi said only one member
of the ECB Governing Council had dissented.

The ECB also
announced that it will keep its main interest rate at a record low 0.75
percent, holding fire after a pick-up in inflation last month offset
pressure to breathe life into the flagging euro zone economy by easing
borrowing costs. -- Reuters