Jan 21, 2015 3 min read

NEW YORK – Another choppy day on Wall Street ended with stocks broadly higher on hopes of new stimulus measures for Europe’s weak economy and a sharp rise in oil prices.

Stocks flitted between gains and losses at the open of trading Wednesday, then rose on media reports that new stimulus measures by the European Central Bank will be as large as investors anticipated. The bank is expected today to unveil a massive round of government bond buying, a program known as quantitative easing.

All 10 sectors of the Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index rose. A gain in oil prices helped push the energy sector up 1.8 percent, the biggest gainer.

The bumpy market is not surprising after big stock gains last year and the year before, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investments.

“Investors are worried the gains can’t possibly last another year,” he said. “Investors are really nervous. “

Investors also weighed a batch of corporate earnings reports. Netflix surged 17 percent on a jump in fourth-quarter profits. But IBM’s results disappointed and its stock dropped 3 percent.

Europe is facing anemic growth, high unemployment and falling prices. To combat this, many investors were expecting the European Central Bank to buy 500 billion euros ($580 billion) of various government bonds.

“All eyes are on the Mario Draghi,” said Anastasia Amoroso, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, referring to the ECB president. “This is the most anticipated event of the week.”

The S&P 500 rose 9.57 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 2,032.12. It was third straight day of gains for the index, a first in the new year.

The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 39.05 points, or 0.2 percent, to 17,554.28. The Nasdaq gained 12.58 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,667.42.

Reporting of fourth-quarter corporate earnings is in full swing. When all S&P 500 companies have reported, earnings per share are expected to edge up 0.5 percent, the smallest quarterly gain in two years, according to FactSet. A slump in oil, down more than 50 percent over the last seven months, is largely to blame. EPS at energy companies are expected to fall 22 percent from a year earlier.

“This earnings season is not as much of a slam dunk as in the past,” said JP Morgan’s Amoroso. “In prior seasons we had all sectors contributing (to gains), but energy and some industrial companies aren’t now. There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

In economic news, construction of new homes rebounded in December, helping to push activity for the entire year to the highest level since the peak of the housing boom nine years ago. Homebuilders D.R. Horton rose 2 percent.

The Commerce Department report showed that builders started construction at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.09 million in December, an increase of 4.4 percent from November.