Wall Street surges

Wall Street kicked off the second quarter with a huge rally – a gain of nearly 400 points in the Dow Jones industrials.

Investors had a surge of optimism that the worst of the credit crisis has passed.

Financial stocks were among the big winners after Lehman Brothers Holdings and Switzerland’s UBS issued new shares to bolster their balance sheets. The better tone in the market sent many financial companies higher.

Wall Street was also boosted from better-than-expected economic data.

The Dow rose 391 points to the 12,654 level.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 index rose 47.47, or 3.59%, to close at 1,370.17, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 83.65, or 3.67%, to 2,362.75.