Stocks Ended Higher, Oil Above $40

U.S. stocks ended higher on Thursday as strong gains in oil prices pushed energy and materials stocks higher, buoying the main benchmarks. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 155.73 points, or 0.90%, to 17,481.49. The S&P 500 gained 13.37 points, or 0.66%, to 2,040.59. The Nasdaq Composite added 11.01 points, or 0.23%, to 4,774.98.

Oil prices hit 2016 highs on Thursday, with U.S. crude surging 5 percent to pierce the $40 barrier, on optimism that major producers will strike an output freeze deal next month amid rising crude exports and gasoline demand in the United States. The front-month in U.S. crude’s West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures (CLc1) settled up $1.74, or 4.5 percent, at $40.20. Brent crude’s front-month (LCOc1) finished up $1.21 at $41.54, after earlier reaching the year’s peak of $41.60.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and its DePuy unit were ordered by a Texas federal jury on Thursday to pay about $500 million (345.13 million pounds) to five plaintiffs who said they were injured by Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implants.

Adobe reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings rose to $254.3 million, or 50 cents a share, from $84.9 million, or 17 cents a share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the maker of Photoshop, Illustrator design software and PDFs would have earned 66 cents a share. Revenue increased to $1.38 billion from $1.11 billion.