Profit growth pickup could justify Wall Street rally

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. companies are set to report their strongest profit growth in two years, which could go a long way toward justifying Wall Street's record-breaking rally, say stock investors who anticipate many companies will top expectations. Fresh from a year-long decline in quarterly profits, companies in the benchmark S&P 500 are expected to report their bottom lines grew by 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter, the latest Thomson Reuters data shows, the str