Stocks have best week since 2013

Stocks closed out their strongest week in five years Friday and have now recovered more than half of the losses they suffered in a plunge earlier this month.

Investors, cheered by a mix of cheaper stock prices and solid company profits, got back to buying stocks almost as quickly as they started dumping them. The gain Friday was the sixth in a row for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

The S&P 500 has risen almost 6% in its current streak. Investors haven’t hesitated to buy the same types of stocks that did well before the market’s recent slump, including technology companies and banks.

In a typical market downturn, investors might avoid stocks that have had huge run-ups out of fear they had gotten too expensive. Instead, investors are still betting on more strength in the economy and are buying stocks that tend to do better in times of faster growth.

After an unusually long period of calm, stocks plunged at the start of February as investors worried about inf lation and rising interest rates. The S&P 500 fell 10% from its Jan. 26 record high. But investors weren’t scared off for long.

Sameer Samana, global equity and technical strategist for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said bond and credit markets showed that the fear wasn’t spreading. Companies were still able to borrow at relatively low interest rates, which showed lenders weren’t concerned the economy was weakening.

The S&P 500 edged up less than 0.1% on Friday. That brought it to a gain of 4.3% this week, its best since January 2013.

Stocks were higher earlier in the day, but they took a hit after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III announced the indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian organizations in a plot to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Home builders rose after the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes jumped. NVR rose 4.3% to $3,208.23. D.R. Horton rose 1% to $45.57.

Among healthcare companies, drugmaker AbbVie climbed 3.2% to $118.60, and Johnson & Johnson rose 1.5% to $133.15.

The indictment Mueller announced says the Russians used social media propaganda. Facebook fell 1.4% to $117.36. Twitter fell 1.6% to $33.06

Wells Fargo’s Samana said the recovery from the recent 10% plunge may not be smooth. “We see another year of solid returns” for stocks, he said. “It’ll just come with these bouts where people worry about rates and inflation and the end of the cycle.”

Since the market hit its recent low point Feb. 8, the S&P 500’s technology index is up 8.5% and its financial company index is up 6.7%. This week alone, Apple has jumped 10%, chip maker Applied Materials soared 14.5%, and Amazon rose 8%.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.87% from 2.91%.

U.S. crude oil rose 34 cents to $61.68 a barrel. Brent crude rose 51 cents to $64.84 a barrel. Wholesale gasoline rose 2 cents to $1.75 a gallon. Heating oil rose 2 cents to $1.91 a gallon. Natural gas fell 2 cents to $2.56 per 1,000 cubic feet. Gold inched up 90 cents to $1,356.20 an ounce. Silver fell 8 cents to $16.71 an ounce. Copper stayed at $3.25 a pound.

The dollar rose to 106.30 yen from 106.27 yen. The euro fell to $1.2413 from $1.2506.