Stocks climb on Fed policy signals; oil slips again

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equities markets rallied on Thursday, with Wall Street up more than 1 percent for a second straight day on what investors viewed as a favorable result from the Federal Reserve's most recent meeting.

The Swiss franc tumbled after its central bank announced a surprise charge on deposits, wary of a flood of money exiting Russia and likely inflows from the euro zone if the European Central Bank starts full-scale money printing early next year.

Wall Street built on its best day of the year from Wednesday, with the S&P 500 gaining another 1 percent after the Fed's upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy. The promise from the Fed to be patient - yet add a note of clarity on when it might raise rates - also helped boost European and Japanese shares.

A Reuters poll of Wall Street dealers puts expectations for the first interest-rate increase in June of 2015.

"Even doves need to tighten at some point when the numbers start looking good," said James Liu, global market strategist at JPMorgan Funds in Chicago.

The MSCI world equity index <.MIWD00000PUS>, which tracks shares in 45 nations, rose 1.4 percent to 413.06.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 218.41 points, or 1.26 percent, at 17,575.28. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was up 25.86 points, or 1.28 percent, at 2,038.75. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was up 65.98 points, or 1.42 percent, at 4,710.29.

U.S. stocks benefited from gains for technology companies. The sector <.SPLRCT> was up 1.8 percent. "All the money that has come out of oil needs to find a home. Money is systematically being forced into equities, for example, out of energy into technology," said Andre Bakhos, managing director at Janlyn Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Oil slipped more than a dollar after early gains, with Brent crude at $60.26 a barrel after earlier rising as high as $63.70. WTI crude dropped 86 cents to $55.61 a barrel, after earlier gains drove it up to $58.73.

Pressure on Russia's rouble remained as Vladimir Putin tried to cool worries of a financial crisis taking hold.

The rouble gave back some of Wednesday's recovery. Putin, in his end-of-year news conference, sought to calm worries that the near-45 percent plunge in the rouble since June has left the country on the brink of a full-blown crisis.

The rouble was roughly 1 percent weaker on the day , though Moscow's dollar-traded stock market <.IRTS> surged more than 8 percent and Russian bond spreads over U.S. Treasuries were down around 100 basis points from the 5-1/2 year high hit this week.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 17/32 in price to yield 2.207 percent. It reached a one-week high of 2.22 percent earlier on Thursday.

The Swiss National Bank's move to introduce a charge on deposits was accompanied by a cut in its main rate band. The franc fell to its lowest since mid-October against the euro and to a two-year low against the dollar .

The greenback was last at 0.9804 Swiss franc, and the dollar index <.DXY> was up 0.2 percent.

(Additional reporting By Richard Leong and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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