NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street rallied Monday as oil prices fell back and alleviated some of investors' concerns about accelerating inflation. The Dow Jones industrials gained 130 points.Oil's retreat helped soothe some of Wall Street's worries about inflation's impact on consumer spending. Crude briefly reached a new trading high of $126.40, but investors seemed shy, for the time being at least, to add to oil's huge gain of nearly $10 last week. Light, sweet crude oil fell $1.73 to settle at $124.23 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"This market does seem to be reacting positively to any sort of easing we see in the energy patch," said Craig Peckham, market strategist at Jefferies & Co.
Investors also got some encouraging news about the credit crisis from London-based HSBC Holdings PLC, which said its first-quarter profits were up from a year ago although the global banking company took a $3.2 billion write-down on subprime mortgage assets in the United States. The company did echo other assessments that the U.S. was likely to fall into recession this year.
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