Equities rise on Fed signals; oil resumes declines

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equities markets rallied on Thursday, with Wall Street up more than 1 percent for a second straight day with investor sentiment buoyed by comments from the U.S. Federal Reserve's last policy meeting of the year.

The Swiss franc tumbled after the country's 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.

The dollar rose against major currencies, and world oil prices resumed a months-long decline after Wednesday's rally, though asset manager Pimco said cheap oil should help global economic growth next year.

Wall Street powered higher, with the S&P 500 rising more than 1 percent one day after the benchmark index marked its best day in more than a year after the Fed's upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy.

The Fed's promise to take a "patient" approach to raising interest rates, while adding a note of clarity on when it might raise rates, also helped boost European and Japanese shares.

Wall Street primary dealers, on average, expect the first rate hike to come in June 2015, according to a Reuters poll.

"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 1.57 percent to 413.68.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 1.48 percent to 17,614.42, the S&P 500 <.SPX> added 1.44 percent to 2,041.86, and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> gained 1.47 percent to 4,712.49.

Gains in technology companies helped drive Wall Street higher, with the tech sector <.SPLRCT> up 2 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.

European shares surged with a rise in Greek equities after the leader of the country's main opposition party said he was committed to keeping Greece in the euro should his leftist party take power next year.

The FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top European shares closed up 3 percent at 1,356.23 points, its biggest percentage rise since November 2011.

Oil slipped, with Brent crude down 1 percent at $60.53 a barrel after earlier rising as high as $63.70. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 63 cents to $55.84 a barrel, after earlier gains drove it up to $58.73.

Pressure on Russia's rouble remained as President Vladimir Putin tried to cool worries of a financial crisis taking hold. In his end-of-year news conference, Putin sought to calm worries that the near-45 percent plunge in the rouble since June has left Russia on the brink of a full-blown crisis.

The rouble was roughly 1.5 percent weaker on the day , though Moscow's dollar-traded stock market <.IRTS> jumped 6.5 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 down 17/32 in price to yield 2.21 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 level since mid-October against the euro and to a two-year low against the dollar .

The greenback was last at 0.9806 Swiss franc, and the dollar index <.DXY> was up 0.2 percent.

(Additional reporting by Richard Leong, Chuck Mikolajczak and Barani Krishnan in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler and Leslie Adler)

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