(Updates to mid-afternoon, changes byline)
By Kevin Plumberg
NEW YORK, April 3 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Thursday,
as technology stocks gained and a report that the chief
executive of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc <MER.N> said the bank is
not in need of more capital strengthened hopes the credit
crisis is easing.
Merrill Lynch shares rose 2.4 percent as optimism mounted
that Wall Street's write-downs for bad assets may have peaked.
Earlier this week, the market rallied sharply after Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc <LEH.N> and UBS AG <UBSN.VX> raised a
combined $19 billion in capital to bolster their balance
sheets.
Technology shares rose after better-than-expected results
from Research in Motion <RIM.TO> <RIMM.O>, the maker of the
BlackBerry device. Apple Inc <AAPL.O> and International
Business Machines Corp <IBM.N> climbed.
"Markets are starting to pay more attention to any
indication that what caused the slowdown is no longer as
relevant as what it was six months ago," said Peter Kenny,
managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New
Jersey.
The Merrill story "just played into the Street's
expectation that we are turning a corner," he said.
Japan's Nikkei newspaper said Merrill CEO John Thain said
in an interview that the investment bank has no plans to raise
fresh capital, for a sale of the company, or a merger with a
bank.
The Dow Jones industrial average <> was up 33.06
points, or 0.26 percent, at 12,638.89. The Standard & Poor's
500 Index <.SPX> was up 3.08 points, or 0.23 percent, at
1,370.61. The Nasdaq Composite Index <> was up 1.09
points, or 0.05 percent, at 2,362.49.
In the tech sector, shares of Apple, maker of the popular
iPhone, rose 2.5 percent to $151.28. Research in Motion
<RIM.TO> <RIMM.O> jumped 6.5 percent to $123.34 a day after it
reported results that beat expectations and gave a strong
outlook, dispelling fears about the impact of the slowing U.s.
economy. For details, see [].
Metal prices rose as the dollar edged lower, boosting
shares of Alcoa <AA.N>, the world's largest supplier of
aluminum. Alcoa jumped 5.8 percent to $38.54.
Stocks dipped earlier in the session after government data
showed claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to their
highest level in two and a half years. The data was
particularly disturbing coming a day ahead of the March U.S.
employment report.
"We went from a pretty weak open on fairly weak economic
data to positive. The market is looking ahead and is
anticipating the evolution of stronger growth," said Michael
Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners LLC, in Greenwich,
Connecticut.
A measure of industrial metals "is pretty close to record
highs, and those sectors will continue to do well," Darda
added.
(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by
Leslie Adler)
