US stocks gained for a third straight day on Friday after tame consumer price data put inflation fears on the shelf, while an upgrade of bellwether Intel breathed life into the tech sector. The Nasdaq climbed to its highest in more than six years.
In a week that started with relatively little take-over chatter, a report that the New York Mercantile Exchange was exploring a sale of itself helped resume the merger-and-acquisition optimism that has fuelled a rally in stocks for the past few months. The smaller-than-expected increase in US May core consumer prices, which exclude food and energy, followed Thursday's in-line core producer prices index.
The Dow Jones industrial average was up 106.82 points, or 0.79 percent, at 13,660.54. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 11.83 points, or 0.78 percent, at 1,534.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 25.87 points, or 1.00 percent, at 2,625.28.
A jump in shares of Intel Corp triggered an advance in technology stocks after Goldman Sachs raised its rating on the world's dominant chip maker to "buy" from "neutral." Intel shares, which are a component of all three major indexes, rose 3.2 percent to $23.98. Shares of NYMEX, the world's largest energy market, rose 1.7 percent to $142.15.
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