U.S. stock gauges rallied Friday, marking a second straight day of powerful gains that erased ugly losses produced earlier in the holiday-shortened week, as investors appeared to respond to apparent positive developments in Eastern European conflict. Gains gather steam after Moscow agreed to talks with Ukrainian leadership and even as the country’s capital Kyiv was under fire. Still, the White House said it was set to impose sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister Lavrov directly, in response to its invasion of Ukraine. The Dow Jones Industrial AverageDJIA rose 835 points, or 2.5%, to mark the best daily advance since November of 2020.The S&P 500 indexSPX rose 96 points, or 2.2%, to 4,384.The Nasdaq Composite IndexCOMP rose 221 points, or 1.6%, to end at 13,695, after hitting an intraday low at 13,358.29.For the week, the Dow ended almost flat, down less than 0.1%, the S&P 500 finished up 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite booked a 1.1% weekly gain, with the latter two benchmarks managing to claw back from big weekly declines.
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