Stocks finished higher Friday for the second straight day but posted a third straight weekly decline as easing bond prices relieved concerns about a recession and had investors looking for bargains to close out a wild week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 306 points, or 1.20%, to end at 25,886, the S&P 500 advanced 1.44%, while the Nasdaq rose 1.67%. The Dow lost 1.5% for the week and the S&P 500 was off 1%.
The 10-year Treasury yield was recently up 0.02 to 1.547%.
Bloomberg News reported that President Donald Trump reportedly held a call on Wednesday about the plunging stock market with the CEOs of three major U.S. banks. Trump spoke with JPMorgan Chase (JPM - Get Report) CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America's (BAC - Get Report) Brian Moynihan, and Citigroup's (C - Get Report) Michael Corbat, Bloomberg said, citing people with knowledge of the situation, and asked about the health of U.S. consumer.
The three chief executives told told Trump that while consumers were doing well, they would do better if such issues as the U.S.-China trade war resolved.
"Asian and European equities pushed higher overnight while Treasury yields rebounded after hitting multi-year and even all-time lows across the curve this week," said Gorilla Trades strategist Ken Berman. "All of the key risk-on sectors are up by more than 1%, so while (Thursday's) bounce was weak, (Friday's) broad rally could be the start of a larger-scale move."
3M (MMM - Get Report) helped lead the Dow's advance Friday, followed by JPMorgan Chase (JPM - Get Report) and Apple (AAPL - Get Report) .
The ongoing U.S.-China trade war remains top of investors' minds. Comments Thursday from President Donald Trump during a visit to Morristown, N.J., were also cited as adding to Friday's positive tone as he repeated his assertion that the U.S. was having "very good discussions with China" and that he plans to speak with China President Xi Jinping in the near future. "They very much want to make a deal," Trump said. "I think the longer it goes the stronger we get ... I have a feeling (the current trade war) is going to go fairly short." Trump agreed earlier this week to delay tariffs on some key products from China until Dec. 15. China said it would counter the latest U.S. tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods but called on the United States to meet it halfway on a potential trade deal. Trump said he didn't think Beijing would retaliate for the U.S. tariffs. "September, the meeting is still on as I understand it, but I think more importantly than September, we're talking by phone, and we're having very productive talks," Trump said. Shares of Palo Alto Networks ( PANW - Get Report) fell 7% on a key sales executive's planned departure. Shares of Nvidia ( NVDA - Get Report) surged 7.3% to $159.56 after the after the chipmaker posted stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings as videogame revenue offset an ongoing slide in data center sales. Nvidia is Real Money's Stock of the Day.