NEW YORK -- Wall Street stocks rallied Friday on good corporate profit news, with the three Benchmark indices booking their first weekly gains since late August.

Traders bought stocks despite lower retail and consumer confidence data, after corporate giant General Electric Co.

said that its third- quarter earnings matched forecasts.

The Bellwether Dow Jones Industrial average finished its largest two-day advance since March 2000. It climbed 316.34 points, or 4.2 per cent, to 7,850.29, DPA reported.

The broader standard and poor's 500 index gained 31.40 points, or 3.9 per cent, to 835.32.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 47.11 points, or 4.1 per cent, to 1,210.48.

"General Electric shares are a great barometer of this stock market, because they've gotten a lot cheaper and they've gotten to the point where they can bounce back if the news just isn't getting worse," Henry Cavanna of J.P. Morgan Fleming asset management told the Bloomberg Financial News Agency.

For the week, the Dow rose 4.3 per cent, the S&P gained 4.3 per cent, and the Nasdaq advanced 6.2 per cent.

Analysts cautioned that rallies have come and gone during the bear market that started in early 2000.

On currency markets, the U.S. dollar traded at 1.01 euros and 124.04 yen. Gold was down 2.10 dollars to 316.85 dollars per fine ounce.