GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks climb on Fed policy signals; oil slips again

(Updates with Wall Street rally, latest prices; changes

dateline; previous LONDON)

* Wall Street on track for second day of strong gains

* Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) jump as Fed pledges to be patient on withdrawing

stimulus

* Oil down after brief short-covering gains

By Michael Connor

NEW YORK, Dec 18 (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, which tracks

shares in 45 nations, rose 1.4 percent to 413.06.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 218.41

points, or 1.26 percent, at 17,575.28. The Standard & Poor's 500

Index was up 25.86 points, or 1.28 percent, at 2,038.75.

The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 65.98 points, or 1.42

percent, at 4,710.29.

U.S. stocks benefited from gains for technology companies.

The sector 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 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 was up 0.2 percent.

(Additional reporting By Richard Leong and Chuck Mikolajczak in

New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)