Wall Street rose more than 1% in afternoon trade after S&P reaffirmed the triple a ratings on two big bond insurers, easing credit loss concerns.

MBIA & Ambac, which rely on their top credit scores to guarantee $ 1.2 trillion in bonds, led gains & helped banks and insurers rebound from earlier losses.

Prior to the late-day fireworks, the stock market was trading flat, with participants lacking any real conviction on either the buy side or the sell side despite some M&A activity.

Financial shares fell earlier in the day after analyst predicted that Citigroup may post a second straight quarterly loss.

Both Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae ended lower after a Goldman Sachs downgrade. The existing home sales fell to a weak annual rate of 4.89 million units, but were better than analyst estimates.

The Dow shot up 189.20 points, or 1.53%, to 12,570.22.  The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 18.69 points, or 1.38%, to 1,371.80; and the Nasdaq composite index rose 24.13 points, or 1.05%, to 2,327.48.

A look at how the Indian ADRs performed:

Name Infosys Sify Rediff.com India Satyam Wipro ICICI Bank HDFC Bank MTNL VSNL Dr Reddy's Lab Tata Motors Patni Computer Sterlite Ind

Symbol INFY SIFY REDF SAY WIT IBN HDB MTE VSL RDY TTM PTI SLT

Price 42.13 4.74 8.21 26.61 12.07 55.6 114.13 6.21 24.36 14.24 18.12 13.13 20.35

Change 0.63 0.05 -0.14 0.78 0.32 1.73 2.66 0.14 0.48 0.51 0.41 0.30 0.65

Change% 1.52% 1.07% -1.68% 3.02% 2.72% 3.21% 2.39% 2.31% 2.01% 3.71% 2.32% 2.34% 3.30%

Volume 2,163,978 58,666 57,808 817,924 449,200 2,400,007 764,857 131,700 131,900 400,002 670,968 19,800 1,070,160

High 42.14 4.78 8.38 26.67 12.10 55.60 114.49 6.26 24.68 14.35 18.20 13.17 20.54

Low 41.07 4.65 8.10 25.58 11.67 53.94 107.6 5.95 23.21 13.60 17.71 12.83 19.76