U.S. stocks ended sharply higher Friday as investors welcoming the results exceeded expectations of big names from the coast and anticipating a positive outcome to the crisis of debt in the euro area.
The Dow Jones gained 2.31% or 267.01 points to 11,808.79 points. The Standard & Poor's has been 1.88% or 22.86 points to 1238.25 points.The Nasdaq Composite was awarded 1.49% or 38.84 points to 2637.46 points.
For the week, the Dow rose 1.3%, the S & P 1.1% but the Nasdaq fell 1.1%.
Obstacles remain on the path to solving the crisis in the euro area and major differences still separate France and Germany, but investors appreciate that the leaders of the euro area are set a deadline to Wednesday.
A meeting between Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso and Herman van Rompuy will be held Saturday night in Brussels on the eve of the summit of the EU and the euro area on the debt crisis. This meeting will be preceded by a bilateral meeting between French President and German Chancellor.In addition, the principle of a new special meeting of the Eurogroup summit by the euro area on Wednesday, is also acquired.
In addition, the finance ministers of the euro area approved Friday the release of the sixth tranche of aid to Greece. This round of eight billion euros must now be approved by the International Monetary Fund.
This is the third week of up to the S & P, the most since February. The benchmark index fund managers will have to get out of the range 1230 and 1250 in which it tends to evolve.
On the values front, McDonald's reported a better than expected for the third quarter. The value ended with a gain of 3.7% to 92.32 dollars.The index values of consumption has advanced 2.8%.
Honeywell International jumped 5.8% to 51.28 dollars. The industrial group has raised its profit forecast after better than expected quarterly accounts.
General Electric has instead yielded 1.9% to 16.31 dollars. Investors are questioning the lower margin of the power equipment sector industrial conglomerate, in spite of the consolidated results as expected.
The S & P industrials, which includes GE and Honeywell, ended with a gain of 1.9%.
According to data from Thomson Reuters, the 133 companies in the S & P 500 that have released their quarterly accounts on Friday, showed 68% of profits above expectations.