NEW YORK, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. stocks ended sharply higher Friday, with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closing at record highs, as the Wall Street cheered over the country's newly-released upbeat economic growth data as well as strong quarterly results from big technology companies.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 33.33 points, or 0.14 percent, to 23,434.19. The S&P 500 added 20.67 points, or 0.81 percent, to 2,581.07. The Nasdaq Composite Index soared 144.49 points, or 2.20 percent, to 6,701.26.
U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3 percent in the third quarter of 2017, beating market consensus of 2.5 percent, according to the advance estimate released by the Commerce Department Friday. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.
The increase in real GDP in the third quarter reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures, private inventory investment, non-residential fixed investment, exports, and federal government spending, said the department.
"Indeed, the start of a rebound in inventories is part of a bigger-picture rebound in the economy since the 2015 slump. The most notable acceleration this year is in business-fixed investment in structures and equipment, which were collectively negative in 2015 and made zero contribution in last year's fourth quarter," said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, in a note.
Corporate earnings reports also came in positive. After Thursday's closing bell, four big tech giants -- Amazon.com Inc., Google parent company Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. -- all reported robust third-quarter results.
After the releases, shares of those four companies all posted solid gains Friday, with Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Intel spiking 13.22 percent, 4.26 percent, 6.41 percent and 7.38 percent, respectively.
The latest data from Thomson Reuters showed that the S&P 500 companies' blended earnings in the third quarter of 2017 are expected to rise 6.7 percent year on year, while the revenues are forecast to increase 5.1 percent.
