Stock market rallies as bank fears subside

Stocks rallied Wednesday as Wall Street shakes off more of the fear that dominated it earlier this month.

The S&P 500 rose 1.4% for its fourth gain in the last five days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 323 points, or 1%, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 1.8%.

They followed similar sized gains in other markets around the world and put the S&P 500 on track to close a tumultuous month with a modest gain. That’s despite the month being dominated by worries about banks and whether the industry is cracking under the pressure of much higher interest rates.

Forceful actions by regulators have helped to calm some of the worries about banks. By Wednesday, a measure of fear among stock investors on Wall Street fell to nearly where it was on March 8. That was the day before Silicon Valley Bank’s customers suddenly yanked out $42 billion in a panicked dash. It became the second-largest U.S. bank failure in history and sparked harsher scrutiny of banks around the world.

“I think the market has been very much focused on a set of extremes, like what we saw in the COVID period, where it was either: The sky is falling, or everything is euphoric,” said Zach Hill, head of portfolio management at Horizon Investments.

While he doesn’t think fears about banks are completely gone, he says now “we’re in much more of a middle ground environment, in terms of the economy and in terms of rate hikes flowing through to economic activity.”