Thursday's early afternoon trade: Stocks stay up on Fed's $2.3trn backstop

Wall Street rose for the third time in four days on Thursday as the US Federal Reserve rolled out a massive $2.3 trillion program to bolster local governments and businesses, while oil prices gained on expectations of a drastic cut in output.

In what is likely to be its largest rescue effort ever, the Fed said it would work with banks to offer 4-year loans to companies of up to 10,000 employees and directly buy bonds of states and more populous counties and cities.

"(The Fed's move) should give some confidence to investors, that the risks this time around are maybe not the same as the risks in the financial crisis," said Randy Watts, chief investment officer at O'Neil Global Advisors.

The defensive real estate and utilities sectors jumped more than 5% to lead gains among the major S&P 500 sectors.

Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Apache Corp rose between 2% and 18% as oil prices gained, as sources said OPEC and other oil producers would debate cuts as big as 20 million barrels per day, equivalent to about 20% of global supplies.

Meanwhile, data showed initial US jobless claims fell slightly last week to 6.6 million, from an upwardly revised 6.87 million the week before.

At 11:48 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 461.04 points, or 1.97%, at 23,894.61, the S&P 500 was up 50.16 points, or 1.82%, at 2,800.14 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 70.01 points, or 0.87%, at 8,160.92.

Walt Disney Co jumped 4.1% as the company said its Disney+ streaming service had attracted more than 50 million paid users globally.

Wall Street's big banks also rose at least 4%, with Citigroup and Wells Fargo jumping more than 10% each.