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Stocks posted gains for the fourth straight day on Tuesday on growing hopes Greece would take a key step to avoiding a debt default, adding momentum to a recent rebound. The Nasdaq posted its biggest percentage gain since October, while the S&P 500 marked its best day in two months in what traders believe could be continued short-term buying from deeply oversold levels.

The Greek government survived a key vote of confidence Tuesday, enabling Athens to push ahead with tough austerity measures to avoid a default. For details, see ]

All eyes will be on the U.S. Fed's policy meeting and comments from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke at a news conference later Wednesday. A statement from the Federal Open Market Committee is due at 12:30 p.m. EDT, followed by Bernanke's press conference at 2:15 p.m. EDT.

The Fed is likely to acknowledge renewed weakness in the U.S. economy and reiterate its commitment to keeping interest rates low for an extended period. Investors will look for clues on new measures to support the economy as the Fed's second quantitative easing program comes to an end.

"Reality quickly shifts the market focus back to the global economy and its growth prospects, and the Fed meeting today will highlight that," said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak + Co in New York.

"In terms of doing more (to) boost asset prices again or doing less, also known as exit, (Bernanke) will unlikely commit to anything with the huge amount of uncertainty on the outlook."

S&P 500 futures fell 1 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration of the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 8 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures shed 3.75 points.

In earnings news, Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) reported a 54 percent jump in quarterly profit on Tuesday, kept its sales growth target, and warned of weakness in European demand. Its shares fell 3.2 percent to $31.00 in premarket trade.

But FedEx Corp shares (FDX.N) rose 3 percent to $91.81 premarket after the shipping group reported quarterly results.

Net short positions by hedge funds on the S&P 500 have recently increased, according to Societe Generale's cross-asset research team. Hedge funds have also turned increasingly to shorting government bonds, especially at the long end of the curve, although overall positions remained fairly limited.

PostRock Energy Corp (PSTR.O) will buy Constellation Energy Group Inc's (CEG.N) stake in Constellation Energy Partners to consolidate the oil and gas company's operations in the Cherokee Basin of Kansas and Oklahoma.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Greece's government won a vote of confidence late on Tuesday, a crucial step toward securing further short-term and longer-term financial aid from the European Union and the IMF as the country tries to avoid the euro zone's first sovereign debt default.

"For the next three years, we're going to see different economies work out different problems. For European economies, especially Greece, it would be through default," Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of PIMCO, told reporters in Taipei on Wednesday via a video conference.

He didn't identify which economies other than Greece he was referring to.

El-Erian has suggested in the past that Greece would default and that Europe risks wasting money for nothing by pumping billions of dollars into the ailing economy.

"Nothing has been done to enhance growth," he said. "No single (Greek) indicator has shown strength. They are afraid a restructuring would hurt European banks."

He doubted a Greek default could trigger another global financial crisis.

"Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain would have to be involved. But Greece is too small in terms of economic impact," El-Erian said.

PIMCO, or the Pacific Investment Management Co, is based in California and is the world's biggest bond fund manager with nearly $1.3 trillion in assets under management.

Horacio Valeiras, chief investment officer of fund firm Allianz Global Investors Capital (AGIC), predicted that Ireland and Portugal, countries that also received financial bailouts in the wake of the global credit crisis, will have to restructure their debts.

PIMCO and AGIC are units of German insurer Allianz, which organised briefings for the media and investors.

"We are not investing in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal," said Valeiras, who appeared in person at the press briefing. He said default in Greece was "inevitable".

The confidence vote in Athens came after a European ultimatum requiring the debt-choked state to agree to a five-year austerity package of measures within the next two weeks or miss out on a 12-billion euro tranche of aid money.

Without the loan, Athens will run out of cash next month and policymakers fear a default would send shockwaves through the global financial system.

European officials are also considering a second bailout package worth an estimated 120 billion euros that is meant to extend Greece's year-old 110 billion euro deal and fund it into 2014.

Sovereign debt elsewhere in the developed world has also soared since the global crisis, affecting investment decisions.

The fiscal weight of the global financial crisis prompted PIMCO to dump U.S. sovereign bonds. The fund's $236.9 billion PIMCO Total Return Fund said in March it had completed a move in February to drop all its investments in U.S. government debt.

Earlier this month, Tomoya Masanao, the head of Japan portfolio management for PIMCO, said the fund manager had cut holdings of Japanese and U.S. government debt to shift money into more attractive investments, such as debt issued by the likes of Australia, Canada, Brazil and Mexico.

(Reporting by Faith Hung; Editing by Neil Fullick)

The euro last traded at $1.4366, extending its recovery from a three-week low of $1.4073 it hit last Thursday, but below the high of $1.4435 it touched after the vote in Athens, bringing the beleaguered country a step closer to a 12 billion euro aid package.

If Greece avoids defaulting on its sovereign debt, it could help renew confidence in the single currency, though the head of the world's largest bond fund Pimco said Greece's way out of its debt problem would be through default.

Next in line is the Fed meeting which began on Tuesday, against the backdrop of a weakening U.S. economy that will likely force policymakers to plan for the possibility that things may get worse.

Chairman Ben Bernanke will address the media at 1815 GMT and is widely expected to revise down the Fed's earlier quarterly forecasts for U.S. GDP growth.

This is unlikely to be good news for the dollar, Credit Agricole's head of global FX strategy Mitul Kotecha said in a briefing note, "given that the Fed is set to downgrade its growth forecasts, with the comments on the economy likely to sound a little more downbeat given the loss of momentum recently as reflected in a string of disappointing data releases."

The dollar index .DXY, which tracks the dollar against a basket of major currencies, fell to a one-week low at 74.516, well off last week's peak of 76.015. It was last at 74.778.

Against the yen, the dollar was little changed at 80.25, comfortably within the prevailing 79.50-81.50 range.

Greece's vote outcome sheered Asian stock markets, especially Japan's Nikkei .N225 which rose for the third day in a row, gaining 1.4 percent at 9595.26.

Financial services firms were among the big gainers, following rivals elsewhere which rose on hopes that the vote will prove a step toward resolving the European debt crisis, one of the most persistent worries for markets.

"The market is up on Greece, but it's a temporary rise on a news event. We may see some more short-covering going into the afternoon, but that's about it -- fundamentals haven't changed a notch," said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager for Ichiyoshi Investment Management.

MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific stocks .MIAPJ0000PUS excluding Japan was up 0.7 percent, while indices in Hong Kong .HSI and South Korea .KS11 also rose.

Brent crude oil for delivery in August made a partial recovery to $111.30 a barrel after falling more than 70 cents on Tuesday, largely on ongoing worries about the euro zone.

Gold inched up to $1,546.65 per ounce by 0200 GMT, little changed from Tuesday's close.

Gold, one of the chief beneficiaries of worries about the security of currencies and other assets, set a record high of $1,575.79 per ounce in early May. Copper was down slightly at $9,039 per tonne after rising almost 1 percent in the previous session.

The regulator's complaint against the banking giant was larded with excerpts from internal JPMorgan communications that indicated bankers sold a collateralized mortgage obligation in 2007 to ensure that it could get credit-scarred mortgage securities off its books.

"We are soooo pregnant with this deal, we need a wheel-barrel to move around," the head of CDO distribution wrote in a March 22, 2007 email to the sales staff. "Let's schedule the cesarian, please!"

The settlement with JPMorgan, the second-largest U.S. bank, echoes on a smaller scale the $550 million accord that Goldman Sachs Group Inc reached last July over its Abacus collateralized debt obligation.

Both cases involved charges that banks let hedge fund clients structure complex securities -- and then bet against them -- without disclosing their involvement to investors.

The SEC on Tuesday also filed civil charges against Edward Steffelin, 41, a former managing director at the now bankrupt GSC Capital Corp, which served as collateral agent for the JPMorgan CDO marketed as Squared CDO 2007-1.

It alleged that he hoped to get a job with the Magnetar Capital LLC hedge fund, while helping to create marketing materials that failed to disclose that Magnetar chose some securities in the CDO and had a nearly $600 million bet that they would lose value.

JPMorgan sold $150 million of Squared CDO notes to pension funds and investors worldwide that lost most of their value in just 10 months, the SEC said.

"This is deja vu all over again," said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University, recalling the Goldman case with a quote from baseball legend Yogi Berra. "If Goldman and JPMorgan were doing this, it wouldn't surprise me if others were as well."

FULL PIPELINE

No individual bankers were charged in the JPMorgan case, but SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami told reporters the agency continues to pursue individuals and has charged roughly 50 people in cases related to the credit crisis of 2008.

Earlier in the day, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro also addressed criticism that about the lack of charges against individuals.

"It is not for lack of will and desire that we are not seeing as many senior people being named in these cases," Schapiro said. "If we could, we would be naming them."

Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president whose case is ongoing, was the only individual charged by the SEC over Abacus.

Ms. Schapiro said the SEC will continue to bring charges against banks.

"We have a pretty full pipeline of post-crisis cases," she said. "They relate to disclosure failures, particularly around structured products, accounting issues and so forth."

EXACERBATING A CRISIS

Critics say CDOs such as Squared and Abacus allowed banks and mortgage lenders to dump credit-deficient loans and then make more, further inflating the subprime mortgage bubble even as signs of excess were apparent.

JPMorgan agreed to pay a $133 million fine, plus $20.6 million of improper profits and interest. About $125.9 million will go to investors in the Squared CDO, and $27.7 million will go to the U.S. Treasury.

The accord also requires JPMorgan to change its policies for reviewing and approving offerings of mortgage securities. It must be approved by U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan. Steffelin's case was assigned to a different judge.

JPMorgan did not admit wrongdoing, but said it lost nearly $900 million on the Squared transaction. It also said the SEC's penalty reflected in part its voluntary decision to pay $56.8 million to investors in a separate CDO, Tahoma CDO I.

Unlike Goldman, which settled a fraud charge indicating it acted with intent or recklessness, JPMorgan was charged in a way that suggests its activity may have been negligent.

Alex Lipman, a partner at Nixon Peabody who represents Steffelin, criticized the SEC's claims, and denied that his client had been pursuing a job with Magnetar.

"We are baffled by the SEC's decision to proceed against an individual in a contested proceeding on a negligence theory," he said. Steffelin "did not work for the underwriter and had no responsibility for the contents of the offering memorandum."

Magnetar in a statement said SEC staff advised it not to expect any enforcement action by the regulator. "We did not control the asset selection process and our mortgage CDO investment strategy was designed and implemented to maintain a market-neutral portfolio," it said.

The SEC said Squared sales materials indicated that the underlying investments in the CDO were chosen by a GSC affiliate, but failed to reveal that Magnetar played a significant role.

The SEC earlier this year sent a "Wells notice" indicating possible civil charges to both Steffelin and Michael Llodra, JPMorgan's former global head of structured product CDOs.

Llodra was not charged on Tuesday. He could not immediately be reached for comment. Walton Securities Inc, which according to regulatory records now employs Steffelin, did not return a call seeking comment.

JPMorgan shares closed up 43 cents, or 1.1 percent, at $40.91 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The cases are SEC v. JPMorgan Securities LLC, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-04206; and SEC v. Steffelin in the same court, No. 11-04204.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jonathan Stempel; Additional reporting by David Henry, Andrew Longstreth, Andrea Shalal-Esa and Dan Wilchins; editing by Gerald E. McCormick, John Wallace, Jed Horowitz and Bernard Orr)