Another Dow Record Helps Make Week a Winner

Stocks closed higher Friday on Wall Street, giving the market its fifth gain in a row and notching another record high for the Dow.

• The Dow rose 426.16 points, or 1%, to 44,296.51, up 2% for the week.
• The S&P 500 rose 20.63 points, or 0.3%, to 5,969.34.
• The Nasdaq rose 31.23 points, or 0.2%, to 19,003.65.

Markets have been volatile over the last few weeks, losing ground in the runup to elections in November, then surging following Donald Trump's victory before falling again. The S&P 500 has been steadily rising throughout this week to within close range of its record, the AP reports. It's now within about 0.5% of its all-time high set last week. "Overall, market behavior has normalized following an intense few weeks," said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, in a statement. Several retailers jumped after giving Wall Street encouraging financial updates.

Gap soared 12.8% after handily beating analysts' third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations while raising its own revenue forecast for the year. Discount retailer Ross Stores rose 2.2% after raising its earnings forecast for the year. EchoStar fell 2.8% after DirecTV called off its purchase of that company's Dish Network unit. Smaller company stocks had some of the biggest gains. A majority of stocks in the S&P 500 gained ground, but those gains were kept in check by slumps for several big technology companies. Nvidia fell 3.2%. Intuit, which makes TurboTax and other accounting software, fell 5.7%. It gave investors a quarterly earnings forecast that fell short of analysts' expectations. (More stock market stories.)