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U.S. stocks bounced back fiercely Wednesday, as investors were reassured by the Federal Reserve's minutes which signaled that the first rate hike may not come soon.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 274.83 points, or 1.64 percent, to 16,994.22. The S&P 500 surged 33.79 points, or 1.75 percent, to 1,968.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 83.39 points, or 1.90 percent, to 4,468.59.
The U.S. stock markets have seen big swings recently amid uncertainties about the timing of the U.S. central bank's first rate hike and concerns about global growth outlook.
Major stock indices spiked up shortly after the release of the minutes in the afternoon which stressed that "the current forward guidance for the federal funds rate was data dependent and did not indicate that the first increase in the target range for the federal funds rate would occur mechanically after some fixed calendar interval following the completion of the current asset purchase program."
In some participants' view, it also revealed that "the costs of downside shocks to the economy would be larger than those of upside shocks."
At the same time, a couple of participants pointed out that the appreciation of the dollar might also tend to slow the gradual increase in inflation toward the Fed's 2 percent goal, which provided room for the Fed to hold the interest rate in an extremely low range for a long time.
Shortly after the closing bell, aluminum giant Alcoa unofficially kicked off a new corporate earnings season by reporting better-than-expected quarterly results. The largest U.S. aluminum producer earned 0.31 U.S. dollar per share in the third quarter, higher than market consensus of 0.23 dollar per share, on revenues of 6.24 billion dollars, also beating analysts' expectations of 5.85 billion dollars.
On Tuesday, all the three major indices tumbled more than 1.5 percent on global growth worries, after the International Monetary Fund lowered its global economic growth forecast for 2014 and 2015 for the third time this year.
