Stocks rally on hawkish Fed minutes

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Stocks rally on hawkish Fed minutes

NEW YORK, New York - U.S. stocks increased sharply for a second day Thursday after a less hawkish outlook by the Federal ReserveFederal Reserve, as revealed by minutes of the last monetary meeting earlier this month, which was published on Wednesday.

U.S. stocks are rallying as investors view the minutes of the Fed as a commitment to only tightening policy to fight inflation and after a few retailers provide optimistic outlooks, according to Edward Moya, OANDA analyst.

The Fed locked itself into delivering a couple half-point rate increases until the Jackson Hole Symposium, and that has removed the risk of aggressive tightening in the short term, Moya said.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 305.91 points or 2.68 percent to 11,740, but the biggest mover was the Nasdaq Composite. The Standard and Poor's 500 jumped by 79.13 points or 1.99 percent to 4,057. The Dow Jones industrials increased by 516.91 points or 1.61 percent to 32,367. The U.S. dollar lost steam on foreign exchange markets. The euro was on a rally to 1.0724. The British pound went up to 1.2601 at the beginning of the day. The Japanese yen was slightly higher at 127.08. The Swiss franc gained to 0.9591.

The Canadian dollar was sharply higher at 1.2776. The Australian and New Zealand dollars made a little bit of a gain of 0.7095 and 0.6476 respectively.

On overseas equity markets, the Nikkei 225 lost 72.96 points or 0.27 percent to 26,604. The Australian All Ordinaries retreated 52.40 points or 0.71 percent to 7,339. In New Zealand, the S&P NZX 50 fell 70.53 points or 0.63 percent to 11,102. The Kospi Composite in Seoul, South Korea, fell 4.77 points or 0.18 percent to 2,612. China's Shanghai Composite, going against the trend, was strengthened by 11.58 points or 0.37 percent to 3,119. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 55.07 points or 0.27 percent to close Thursday at 20,116. London's FTSE 100 rose 0.56 percent. Germany's Dax was ahead by 1.59 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris, France climbed 1.78 percent.