NEW YORK — U.S. stocks tallied robust gains Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average capping its longest weekly win streak in six months, after a surge in retail sales and Google Inc.’s earnings lifted sentiment.
“Retail sales were a little better than expected, and earnings so far have been pretty good,” said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.
He noted the S&P 500 index was testing 1,220, the upper part of a two-month trading range.
On Friday, the index added 20.92 points, or 1.7 percent, to 1,224.58. Tallying a second weekly gain, the S&P 500 rose 6 percent from Oct. 7’s close, its biggest weekly rise since July 2009.
Closing in positive territory for 2011 for the first time in more than six weeks, the Dow Jones industrial average added 166.36 points, or 1.5 percent, to 11,644.49, a level that has the blue-chip index 4.9 percent higher on the week and scoring its third consecutive weekly advance, the last occurrence of which took place in the three-week period ending April 8.
Up 7.6 percent from Oct. 7’s finish, the Nasdaq composite index advanced 47.61 points, or 1.8 percent, to 2,667.85. Year to date, the Nasdaq is up 0.6 percent. It was the Nasdaq Composite’s biggest weekly gain since March 2009.
In Paris, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 started discussions on Europe’s debt trouble, with officials reportedly thinking about writing down as much as 50 percent on Greek bonds. “There are a lot of efforts underway to push those potential default concerns out through the end of the year, to get that off the table for the rest of 2011,” said Schwab’s Frederick.
Equities relinquished some of their gains after the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment for October fell to 57.5 from 59.4 in September.
More inspiring for riskier investments, the Commerce Department on Friday reported a 1.1 percent increase in retail sales for September, the largest growth since February, following a 0.3 percent gain for August, with the latter figure revised up from the prior estimate.
