Stock market's gains for week top 3 percent

By Wire Reports - 11/7/2009


Investors added to the week's strong gains in the stock market after finding some positives in a surprisingly weak jobs report.

Stock indexes posted a modest advance in light trading Friday after the Labor Department said the nation's unemployment rate topped 10 percent in October for the first time since 1983, but also that the pace of job losses slowed.

The report reassured some investors that the Federal Reserve will have to hold interest rates low for some time. That tends to weaken demand for the dollar, which in turn gives a boost to stocks.

Meanwhile, General Electric Co. rose 6 percent after analysts raised their ratings on the stocks. It was the biggest gainer among the 30 components of the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Dow rose 17.46, or 0.2 percent, to 10,023.42; the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 2.67, or 0.3 percent, to 1,069.30; and the Nasdaq composite index rose 7.12, or 0.3 percent, to 2,112.44.

For the week, the Dow and the S&P 500 index added 3.2 percent, while the Nasdaq rose 3.3 percent.




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