Markets react to news of Mideast cease-fire

U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 Index up for a fourth day, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr announced a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Hewlett-Packard Co. rallied 2 percent after tumbling 12 percent yesterday. Salesforce.com Inc., the largest maker of online customer-management software, rose 8.8 percent after forecasting sales and profit that were in line with projections. Deere & Co., the largest agricultural equipment maker, fell 3.7 percent as earnings missed analysts' estimates.

The S&P 500 rose 3.22 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,391.03. The Dow Jones industrial average added 48.38 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,836.89. The Nasdaq Composite rose 9.87 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,926.55.

The U.S. stock market will be closed for the Thanksgiving holiday and open for a shortened trading session Friday until 1 p.m.

"The announcement of the cease-fire is by no means a fix to the issue, but it does suggest that the negotiations are going on," said Alan Gayle, senior strategist at RidgeWorth Capital Management in Richmond, Va., which oversees about $47 billion. "In the U.S., the economic releases were mixed, but generally positive."

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits last week as damage to the labor market caused by Hurricane Sandy began to subside. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final index of U.S. consumer sentiment for November rose to 82.7 from 82.6 at the end of last month - lower than the 84.5 projected by economists.

Europe's finance ministers will regroup Monday after talks broke up without an agreement on a debt-reduction package for Greece, with creditors led by Germany refusing to put up fresh money.

Among actively traded stocks, Salesforce rose $12.82 to $158.78. Chief executive officer Marc Benioff is signing bigger enterprise agreements that give customers broad access to Salesforce's software following the company's Dreamforce conference in September.

That's helping to stave off competition from Oracle Corp., SAP AG, and Microsoft Corp., which are buying companies that offer business-management tools over the Internet and gaining traction in an area Salesforce pioneered.

Virus Inc. climbed 13 percent, or $1.38, to $11.73. The maker of the Qsymia weight-loss medicine that won U.S. approval in July jumped after insurer Aetna Inc. cleared the way for coverage of the obesity treatment.

HP added 23 cents to close at $11.94. The stock plunged Tuesday as the company's $8.8 billion write-down tied to the purchase of software maker Autonomy Corp. fueled concern that HP CEO Meg Whitman and her board aren't up to the task of engineering a turnaround.

Deere fell $3.16 to $82.83. The company said farm-equipment sales in Europe will be unchanged or 5 percent lower in fiscal 2013 and Asia will be little changed due to "softer" economic conditions in India and China. That may undermine Deere's effort to expand the share of sales made outside the United States and Canada to 50 percent by 2018.