New York - US stocks shook off weak housing sales data and jumped on Tuesday on the strength of some buoyant earnings reports.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 62.51 points to 13,712.21.
The broad-based S&P 500 added 6.58 points at 1,492.56.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended up 8.47 points at 3,143.18.
Charles Schwab & Co said in an investment update that the jump in the indices followed stronger-than-expected earnings results from Dow members The Travelers Companies and DuPont and came in spite of weaker-than-expected US existing-home sales.
Despite reporting a large loss and earnings that were below expectations, Verizon Communications rose 0.9% after adding some 2.1 million in new wireless customers.
Insurer The Travelers rose 2.2% after beating analyst expectations due to lower payments related to natural disasters than in 2011. The news also gave support to AIG, which rose 2.3%.
Mining company Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold, which also beat expectations, jumped 4.6%.
Delta Air Lines rose 2.9% after reporting earnings that met expectations.
Financial services stocks also jumped on improved macro sentiment. Among those rising were Bank of America (up 1.9%), Morgan Stanley (up 2.7%) Goldman Sachs (up 1.0%) and State Street (up 3.5%).
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion soared 13% in anticipation of a new product launch this month and following reports it is considering divestitures.
Seagate Technology rose 7.1%.
Johnson & Johnson fell 0.7% after reporting better earnings than expected while trimming slightly its 2013 profit outlook.
Slumping aerospace giant Boeing, undergoing regulatory scrutiny following recent problems with its new 787 Dreamliner, was down again, by 0.9%.
Arena Pharmaceuticals retreated 9.7% after it indicated that European regulators had raised issues with its weight-loss drug, Belviq.
Bond prices were mixed. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury was flat at 1.84%. The 30-year slipped to 3.02% from 3.03% late on Friday. The financial markets were closed Monday for a public holiday.
Bond prices and yields move inversely.
Follow Fin24 on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.