U.S. Stocks Rise as BOJ Stimulus Plans Unopposed at G-20

By Namitha Jagadeesh & Nikolaj Gammeltoft

U.S. stocks rose, after the biggest weekly decline in five months for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, as the Group of 20 finance ministers offered no opposition to Japan’s stimulus policies.

The S&P 500 advanced 0.3 percent to 1,559.35 at 9:32 a.m. in New York. The equity gauge fell 2.1 percent last week, its biggest drop since November, as earnings from Bank of America Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. missed estimates and as China’s economyunexpectedly slowed.

“The G-20 meeting outcome on Japan was a positive,” Richard Sichel, who oversees about $1.8 billion as chief investment officer at Philadelphia Trust Co., said in a phone interview. “We’re in the middle of earnings season and that continues to be a key driver. It’s important to us to hear what management teams are saying, how optimistic or pessimistic they sound about future growth.”

At a meeting in Washington late on April 19, the Group of 20 finance chiefs didn’t oppose the Bank of Japan’s plan to buy more than 7 trillion yen ($70 billion) of bonds a month. The central bank’s Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he would proceed with his campaign to end 15 years of deflation. The Bank of Japan (8301) aims to increase inflation to 2 percent within two years.

“Winning international understanding gives me more confidence to conduct monetary policy appropriately,” Kuroda told reporters after the meeting. “We will continue our qualitative and quantitative easing for the next two years.”

Home Sales

In the U.S., sales of previously owned houses rose for a third month in March, economists said before a National Association of Realtors report at 10 a.m. in Washington. Sales increased to a 5 million annualized rate, from 4.98 million in February, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. That would be the highest number since November 2009.

Eight S&P 500 companies including Netflix Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. post their quarterly earnings today. Of the 106 that have reported so far, 72 percent have exceeded analysts’ predictions for earnings, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Profit at S&P 500 companies dropped 1.1 percent in the first three months of the year, according to forecasts compiled by Bloomberg. That would mark the first year-over-year decrease since 2009.

The S&P 500 has surged 130 percent from a 12-year low in 2009 as the Federal Reserveembarked on three rounds of bond purchases to stimulate the economy.

The gains in U.S. consumer stocks, combined with a retreat by global equities this month, have made American companies the five biggest in the world for the first time in eight years. Exxon Mobil Corp., Apple Inc., Google Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are now the largest by market value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To contact the reporters on this story: Namitha Jagadeesh in London atnjagadeesh@bloomberg.net; Nikolaj Gammeltoft in New York at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net

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