Dow Adds Almost 200 Points (ext)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) - Stocks rallied Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished close to 200 points higher and the major U.S. equity indices nabbed weekly gains of more than 2%.

romising durable goods data and technical momentum helped spur the buying spree.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 198 points, or 1.9%, to 10,860, marking a weekly rise of 2.4%. Roughly flat for the week headed into Friday's session, the S&P 500 gained 24 points, or 2.1%, to 1,149. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq finished the week 2.8% higher, closing up by 54 points, or 2.3%, at 2,381 on Friday.

Ralph Fogel, head of investment strategy at Fogel Neale Partners, sees a combination of technical and fundamental reasons behind why the market is paying more attention to the good news than bad news.

"Technically, the market has had a head-and-shoulder bottom so we've been waiting for the market to break out and it did," Fogel said. "It pulled back a little bit but then bounced back - even disappointing jobless claims didn't cave the market. The S&P 500 remained above 1130. From a technical standpoint, that's pretty powerful. So all it took was some good news today -- with durable goods orders that were a little bit of a surprise -- for the market to take off. So the technical underpinnings are there."

"On a fundamental basis," he added, "I think people are starting to wake up to the fact that they can get 2% and change from 10-Year Treasury bonds or they can buy Johnson & Johnson(JNJ) and get a 3.5% yield with the potential for upside."

Earlier, the Commerce Department said durable goods orders declined 1.3% in August after rising 0.7% in the previous month. The decline was slightly lower than the 1.4% drop anticipated by economists, according to Briefing.com. Excluding transportation, orders grew 2% after slumping 3.7% in July. Analysts were expecting only a 0.5% bump.

In commodity markets, November crude gained $1.31, or 1.7%, to settle at $76.49 a barrel. The December gold contract was up by $1.80, or 0.1% to settle $1,298.10 an ounce.