Bank stocks rallied in premarket trade Wednesday, as upbeat jobs data and a surge in oil prices helped boost Treasury yields. The SPDR Financial Select Sector ETF rose 0.8% to $52.39 ahead of the open, just shy of Monday’s 8 1/2-year closing high of $22.41. Among sector heavyweights, shares of Bank of America Corp. shot up 1.8% in active trade, of Citigroup Inc. surged 1.1%, of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. gained 0.9%, of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rose 1.4% and of Wells Fargo & Co. hiked up 0.9%. Payroll processor ADP said 216,000 net new jobs were added in November, above expectations of 160,000. Separately, crude oil futures soared 7.3%, after OPEC agreed to cut production for the first time in eight years. That helped push the yield on 10-year Treasury note up 0.059 percentage points to 2.361%. Higher long-term interest rates can boost bank profits, as they increase the spread between what banks earn by funding longer-term assets, such as loans, with shorter-term liabilities
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