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S&P 500, Dow reach new heights

Although the stock market opened lower Friday, U.S. market indexes ended the day at new highs on news that Greece had agreed to a plan to extend its bailout loans.

NEW YORK – U.S. stocks rose Friday, sending benchmark indexes to records, after European officials reached a deal to extend Greece’s aid for four months.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 0.6 percent to a record 2,110.30. The Dow Jones industrial average added 154.67 points, or 0.9 percent, to 18,140.44, also an all-time high. The Russell 2000 Index reached a record, and the Nasdaq Composite Index rallied 0.6 percent, up for an eighth consecutive day to its highest level since March 2000.

“You don’t have that uncertainty hanging over the market as we enter the end of the week,” said Bill Schultz, who oversees $1.2 billion as chief investment officer at McQueen, Ball & Associates in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “It’s a removal of an obstacle in the way of growth and earnings for companies.”

This is the first time the Dow has closed at a record this year. It’s been 56 days since the Dow’s last all-time high, reached on Dec. 26. When the S&P 500 reached its first record of 2015 last week, it had been 46 days since the previous one.

The Dow climbed to closing records on 38 days in 2014, and on 52 occasions in 2013 as the index recovered from the financial crisis to top its previous high from October 2007 for the first time.

The S&P 500 is up 0.6 percent for the holiday-shortened week. It has gained 2.5 percent this year, trailing all but three of the 24 developed markets tracked by Bloomberg.

Euro-area finance ministers reached an accord that would keep bailout funds flowing to Greece in return for a commitment to meet certain conditions, buying time to work out the detail of longer-term Greek financing.

Talks in Brussels between officials from the 19 euro-area countries concluded Friday evening with an agreement to extend aid to Greece for four months.

The breakthrough in the standoff between Greece and its creditors eases the immediate risk of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government running out of cash as early as next month.

U.S. manufacturing expanded at a faster pace in February, according to the Markit Economics preliminary index of U.S. manufacturing. The index rose to 54.3 in February from a final reading of 53.9 a month earlier, the London-based group said Friday.

Analysts have cut profit forecasts for S&P 500 members amid a rout in oil prices and a rising dollar. They predict earnings will drop this quarter, compared with December projections for an increase. Of the 88 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings this season, 74 beat projections and 56 percent surpassed sales estimates.

Nine of 10 S&P 500 main groups gained, led by health-care and industrials rising at least 0.9 percent. Health-care companies advanced for an eighth day, the longest streak in four months.



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