Stocks closed near their highs Friday, climbing steadily throughout the session, buoyed by a strong consumer sentiment report and as investors appeared to show relief after the euro zone's latest plan to solve its debt crisis.
All three major indexes posted an impressive gain for the second week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 186.56 points, or 1.55 percent, to finish at 12,184.26, led by General Electric and Caterpillar .
DuPont was the only laggard on the blue-chip index.
The S&P 500 rallied 20.84 points, or 1.69 percent, to close at 1,255.19. The Nasdaq soared 50.47 points, or 1.94 percent, to end at 2646.85.
The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, finished below 27.
For the week, the Dow gained 1.55 percent, the S&P climbed 1.69 percent and the Nasdaq soared 1.94 percent. Among Dow components, GE was the biggest gainer for the week, while DuPont sagged.
Nine out of the 10 S&P sectors ended in positive territory, led by banks, while materials lagged.
“On the surface the market looks at this to be in the right direction, but if you go one step deeper, it’s not enough money, there’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of how to implement [the deal] and there’s a fragmentation of the very foundation of the European Union,” said Matthias Kuhlmey, managing director at HighTower. “So the bottomline is that things will stay volatile for a long time and a lot of questions will remain.”
Twenty-six of the 27 EU nations agreed to pursue tighter integrationwith stricter budget discipline in the single currency area, but Britain said it could not accept proposed EU treaty amendmentsafter failing to secure concessions.
British Prime Minister David Cameron added Britain would never joined the single currency, a statement which was immediately criticized elsewhere in Brussels.
With Britain, the EU's third biggest economy, opting out of the fiscal process, questions over the cohesiveness of the wider bloc will be posed.
"As long as the disaster scenario is off the table, the markets can get back to focusing on the fundamentals—the EU summit does have an impact on that," said Aaron Gurwitz, chief investment officer with Barclays Wealth Management. "Although on a day to day basis, I don’t think the summit is having that much of an effect.”
