Wall Street rallies to huge gains, record closing

By Ovunc Kutlu

NEW YORK

Wall Street rallied to post massive gains Wednesday, with all three main indexes closing at their all-time high.

The Dow Jones added 303 points, or 1.5 percent, to climb above the 21,000 threshold for first time in history, and closed at 21,115 points.

It only took 24 trading days for the Dow to reach 21,000 points, from 20,000 -- matching the fastest climb rate that was last seen on May 1999.

The S&P rose 32 points, or 1.4 percent, to 2,395 and the Nasdaq increased 78 points, or 1.3 percent, to 5,904.

The historic surge in stocks came after President Donald Trump made his first speech to a joint session at the U.S. Congress on Tuesday night.

Trump reiterated his economic plans to increase infrastructure spending, lower taxes and promote deregulation.

Encouraged by Trump's pledges, investors focused on buying stocks of major U.S. investment banks on Wednesday.

Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase saw their shares increase by 3.7 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. Wells Fargo stocks gained 3 percent, while Citigroup shares rose 2.9 percent.