US STOCKS-Wall St jumps ahead of Amazon, Alphabet results; stimulus in focus

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* UPS gains on quarterly profit beat
* Exxon posts first annual loss as publicly listed company
* Amazon, Alphabet among top boosts to S&P 500
* Indexes up: Dow 1.99%, S&P 1.73%, Nasdaq 1.42%

(Adds comment, details; updates prices)
By Devik Jain and Medha Singh
Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes jumped more than 1.5%
on Tuesday with Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet set to wrap up
results from the so-called FAANG group of stocks, while signs on
progress on a large fiscal pandemic relief package also lifted
the mood.
Alphabet GOOGL.O , which will report the cost and operating
profit of its Google Cloud business for the first time, added
1.5%, while retail behemoth Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O rose 1.4%.
Shares of both the companies, set to report their
fourth-quarter earnings after market close, were among the top
boosts to the S&P 500 .SPX . The NYSE FANG+TM index .NYFANG
firmed 1.4%.
"There's no reason to think that the strength of earnings on
the part of big tech is likely to diminish until perhaps later
in the year and certainly the fourth quarter was likely to be a
good one," said Julian Emanuel, chief equity and derivatives
strategist at BTIG.
Meanwhile, the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives
prepared to take the first step forward on President Joe Biden's
$1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package on Tuesday, with a key
vote expected to fast-track the measure through Congress.
At 11:39 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
rose 600.37 points, or 1.99%, to 30,812.28, the S&P 500 .SPX
gained 65.25 points, or 1.73%, to 3,839.11 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC gained 190.34 points, or 1.42%, to 13,593.73.
All the 11 major S&P sectors advanced, with economy-linked
energy .SPNY , financial .SPSY and industrials .SPLRCI
gaining the most.
New cases of COVID-19 in the United States fell for a third
week in a row, the first time since last September. The number of people who have received the first dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine is fast closing in the total infections across
the country, according to U.S. CDC data as of Feb. 1.
"Investors are going back to the script of strong earnings
growth ... and expectations of an economic reopening, as the
vaccine get more widely distributed and all of those point to
the continuation of the markets upward trend," said Emanuel.
Wall Street's fear gauge .VIX retreated to near one-week
lows as a retail-driven mania for shorted assets showed signs of
fizzling out.
GameStop Corp GME.N tumbled about 40%, falling sharply for
the second day, while miners Hecla Mining Co HL.N and Coeur
Mining Inc CDE.N also tracked a drop in spot silver prices
XAG= . Exxon Mobil Corp XOM.N posted its first annual loss as a
public company. However, its shares rose about 4% as its
quarterly adjusted profit topped estimates. Exxon's shares, as
well as a jump in oil prices lifted the energy sector by about
3%. United Parcel Service Inc UPS.N gained 2.4% after it beat
quarterly profit estimates on a surge in home delivery volume
due to pandemic-fueled online purchases of holiday gifts and
staples. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 3.8-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and by a 2.5-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 16 new 52-week highs and no new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded 164 new highs and nine new lows.