Investing.com -- The Dow and Nasdaq staged a late-afternoon rally on Friday as investors shrugged off concerns about rising coronavirus cases across the U.S. to focus on Big Tech stocks.
TheDow Jones Industrial Average rose 114 points, or 0.44%, to close at 26,428. The NASDAQ Composite rose 157 points, or 1.49%, to close at 10,745, while the S&P 500 rose 0.77%.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) jumped more than 10% to reach a new record high of $425.04, while Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) rose nearly 4% and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) rose 8.2%. All three reported better than expected results after the closing bell on Thursday.
The late rally overcame investor anxiety about the economic recovery, as rising coronavirus cases and new hotspots threatened to derail business reopening efforts. Frustrating many, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were still at an impasse on a fourth round of economic stimulus, including the fate of a $600 weekly pandemic unemployment program that expires Friday.
"Markets are trading as if there's going to be an emergency stimulus or at least a stopgap measure. Otherwise we would see stocks much, much lower," said Danielle DiMartino Booth, chief strategist of Quill Intelligence in Dallas.
"There's a lot of enthusiasm and investors certainly want stocks to go up, but we keep getting interrupted by the reality of the bad news."
Deaths from COVID-19 appeared to be rising at their fastest rate since early June in the United States, while the epicenter of the pandemic showed signs of shifting to the Midwest.
U.S. stocks opened higher on a boost from tech companies. A surge in the stocks of the tech titans, which make up nearly one-fifth of the S&P 500's value, and an estimated $5 trillion in asset purchases unleashed by the five biggest central banks globally set the S&P 500 on course for its fourth straight monthly gain.
--- Reuters contributed to this report