US stocks surge ahead

Wall Street capped a huge week with a sharp advance today after a US government employment report cooled fears of a recession. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, the measure most closely followed by market watchers, reached a new closing high.

The Labour Department’s report that employers added 110,000 jobs in September, essentially what analysts had expected, reassured Wall Street that the job market was not retreating sharply as was feared a month ago.