US STOCKS-Wall St jumps for 2nd day; Amazon says Bezos to step down from CEO role

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* Exxon posts first annual loss as publicly listed company
* Indexes: Dow up 1.6%, S&P 500 up 1.4%, Nasdaq up 1.6%

(Updates with volume, Amazon's Bezos to step down from CEO
role)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished sharply higher for a
second straight day on Tuesday, helped by gains in Amazon.com
and Google-parent Alphabet ahead of their results and by
optimism over progress on a U.S. pandemic relief package.
While Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O ended the regular session up
1.1%, the company shocked investors after the bell with news
that Jeff Bezos would move to the role of executive chairman in
the third quarter and be replaced by Amazon Web Services head
Andy Jassy as chief executive officer.
The stock was flat in after-hours trading, even as
Amazon.com beat estimates for holiday-quarter sales.
Alphabet GOOGL.O shares shot up more than 6% after the
bell following its earnings report. The stock ended the regular
session up 1.4%.
During the session, the market's rally was broad-based. All
of the S&P 500 sectors ended higher, with the S&P 500 financials
sector .SPSY rising 2.5%. More than 80% of reports from S&P 500 companies so far have
surpassed analysts' earnings expectations, with 97% of reports
from technology companies beating, according to IBES data from
Refinitiv.
Investors also were optimistic as Democrats in Congress
prepared to take the first steps toward fast-track passage of
President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Adding to the upbeat mood, new cases of COVID-19 in the
United States fell for a third week in a row, the first time
since last September. "Some form of the Biden proposal will pass, and there are
certainly investors who are willing to look down the road and
think the market and economy will look brighter," said Rick
Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, a family investment
office in New Vernon, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 475.57 points,
or 1.57%, to 30,687.48, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 52.45 points,
or 1.39%, to 3,826.31 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added
209.38 points, or 1.56%, to 13,612.78.
The recent market mania driven by retail traders over
heavily shorted assets showed some signs of fizzling out.
GameStop Corp GME.N , one of the stocks that had been pushed up
sharply in the frenzy, fell 60% on Tuesday, dropping for a
second day. "Hedge funds are looking for places to put money and the
easy trade for them is to go into big-cap stocks and probably
the broad market in general, just to ensure that they are not
left behind," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment strategist at
Inverness Counsel in New York, New York. "That's probably where
we're getting all of the extra flows here."
Wall Street's fear gauge, the Cboe Volatility index .VIX ,
retreated further.
Exxon Mobil Corp XOM.N posted its first annual loss as a
public company. However, its shares ended up 1.6% as its
quarterly adjusted profit topped estimates. Shares of United Parcel Service Inc UPS.N climbed 2.6%
after it beat quarterly profit estimates on a surge in home
delivery volume due to pandemic-fueled online purchases of
holiday gifts and staples. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 14.72 billion shares, compared
with the 15.6 billion average for the full session over the last
20 trading days.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
2.93-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.91-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 16 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 165 new highs and 7 new lows.