By Shubham Batra and Amruta Khandekar
(Reuters) - Battered U.S. bank shares rebounded on Tuesday, driving Wall Street's main indexes higher, while a slight slowdown in consumer price growth prompted investors to price in a smaller rate hike by the Federal Reserve in March.
Data showed U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% in February from 0.5% in January as Americans faced persistently higher costs for rents and food. On a yearly basis, the CPI rose 6% in February, compared with 6.4% the previous month.
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI increased 0.5% after rising 0.4% in January. In the 12 months through February, the so-called core CPI gained 5.5% after advancing 5.6% in January.
The yield on the two-year Treasury notes, which best reflects interest rate expectations, rose to 4.3% after the data, with traders holding on to bets of a 25-basis-point rate hike in March.
The odds of a pause in rate hikes slipped to 17% for March.
Stocks have been hammered in the past few days after the collapse of SVB Financial Group and peer Signature Bank sent shockwaves through the banking sector.
Investors are now hoping that the Fed will ease up on its aggressive monetary policy stance to prevent a liquidity crisis.
"While CPI continues the trend lower for the eighth consecutive month now, it still is remarkably high by the Fed's standards," said Charles Hepworth, investment director, GAM Investments.
"Therefore, continued hawkishness should still be warranted, or at least that's what the Fed will likely want to state."
Regional bank stocks rebounded after suffering double-digit losses over the past few days, with the KBW Regional Banking index up 7.7%.
First Republic Bank jumped 49.5%, while shares of peer Western Alliance Bancorp were up 40.7%. Trading in shares of both banks was halted multiple times due to volatility.
The S&P 500 banking index rose 2.9% after recording its biggest one-day percentage drop since June 2020 in the previous session.
Meta Platforms Inc rose 6.1% after the Facebook (NASDAQ:META) parent said it would cut 10,000 jobs in a second round of mass layoffs.
Other major rate-sensitive growth stocks such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) rose between 1% and 4%.
At 11:46 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 422.41 points, or 1.33%, at 32,241.55, the S&P 500 was up 75.20 points, or 1.95%, at 3,930.96, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 263.75 points, or 2.36%, at 11,452.59.
Shares of Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc rose 5.6% and 3% respectively, after a California state court revived a ballot measure allowing app-based services to treat drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.
United Airlines Holdings Inc fell 4.6% on a downbeat first-quarter forecast.
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 6.05-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 3.52-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded two new 52-week highs and five new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 18 new highs and 79 new lows.