Good gains for stocks this week

Equity investors have left much of the previous weeks' concerns behind if this week's stock market gains are anything to go by. Reuters reports:

U.S. blue chips inched up on Friday, capping a rally in which the S&P 500 logged its biggest weekly gain since 2003 on speculation that the Federal Reserve's next move will be an interest rate cut...

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 19.87 points, or 0.16 percent, at 12,481.01. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index finished up 1.57 points, or 0.11 percent, at 1,436.11. The Nasdaq Composite Index finished down 2.81 points, or 0.11 percent, at 2,448.93...

The Dow finished the week up 3.1 percent and the Nasdaq gained 3.2 percent. The S&P added 3.5 percent, its biggest rise since March 2003...

Stocks briefly jumped on a report showing an unexpected rise in existing-home sales last month but pared those gains after investors noted that prices have stagnated and the inventory of unsold homes has increased.

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales increased by a stronger-than-expected 3.9 percent to a 6.69 million-unit annual rate as mild weather spurred home buying. Inventories of unsold homes on the market rose 5.9 percent to 3.748 million units.

Big gains were not limited to US stocks. European stocks did well too, as Bloomberg reports:

European stocks rose, posting the biggest weekly gain in four years, as takeover speculation intensified in the auto, utility and media industries...

The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index rose 0.5 percent to 375.98 at the close in London. It gained 4.7 percent this week, the largest advance since March 2003. The Auto & Parts Index climbed 3.9 percent today to its highest since December 1991.

And so did Asian stocks. Again from Bloomberg:

The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific Index climbed 0.4 percent to 146.23 at 7:47 p.m. in Tokyo, set for its highest since Feb. 27. The gauge has risen 3.5 percent in the past five days, the most since the week ended Aug. 18. It's the first weekly gain in four, since a sell-off that began on Feb. 27 wiped out about $3.3 trillion of share values worldwide.