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New York - US stocks finished solidly higher on Tuesday following a mixed bag of economic data and earnings reports, snapping a five-day losing streak for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The Dow advanced rose 90.68 points (0.57 percent) to 15,928.56.
The broad-based S&P 500 jumped 10.94 (0.61 percent) to 1,792.50, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tacked on 14.35 (0.35 percent) at 4,097.96.
The market had been primed for a rally after significant losses on Thursday and Friday and a more modest decline Monday, said Mace Blicksilver, director at Marblehead Asset Management.
"The market's been so weak that it's entitled to a rally-back kind of day," Blicksilver said.
Blicksilver rated Tuesday's Conference Board report showing rising consumer confidence "quite good," but said it was countered by a "terrible" report on durable goods -- US orders sank 4.3 percent in December against expectations of a rise.
Earnings reports were also mixed, with a disappointing outlook from Apple offset by strong results from Pfizer and others.
Despite the equity rebound, the market is still in a "rocky" phase and could see further volatility this week and afterward, Blicksilver said.
Financial stocks rose, including Citigroup (+1.6 percent) and Bank of America (+2.6 percent).
Other winners included technology stocks that gained disproportionately in the 2013 stock rally, including Netflix (+6.7 percent), Facebook (+3.0 percent) and Tesla Motors (+5.2 percent).
Apple tumbled 8.0 percent after projecting lower revenues in the upcoming quarter despite a major iPhone launch in China. Activist investor Carl Icahn, who has been pressing for a big share buyback, announced that he purchased another $500 million in Apple stock.
Dow component Pfizer shot up 2.6 percent after quarterly earnings bested expectations by four cents at 56 cents per share.
Another Dow component, DuPont, fell 1.1 percent despite outperforming earnings forecasts and unveiling a $5 billion share buyback program.
Google rose 2.0 percent after unveiling plan to make its eyewear Google Glass available under prescription and potentially with insurance reimbursement. The product is currently in the test phase, but Google plans a commercial launch this year.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell to 2.75 percent from 2.77 percent Monday, while the 30-year slipped to 3.67 percent from 3.68 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.
