Wall Street closes higher with tech rallies

By Ovunc Kutlu

NEW YORK (AA) - Wall Street closed higher Friday, buoyed by tech stocks, crude oil prices and better than expected U.S. growth.

The Dow added 33 points to end trading at 22,434, while the S&P jumped 20 points to 2,581.

The Nasdaq rallied 144 points, or 2.2 percent, to finish at 6,701, marking its biggest daily gain since last November.

The Dow and the S&P gained 0.5 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, for the week and it was the seventh consecutive week those indexes posted gains. The Nasdaq jumped 1.1 percent for a fifth straight weekly increase.

Amazon soared 13.2 percent Friday with a strong third-quarter earnings report that helped propel founder and CEO Jeff Bezos into the top spot on the world's richest people list.

Microsoft was up 6.4 percent, while Alphabet and Twitter jumped 4.2 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively, thanks to financials that beat market expectations.

The American economy showed strong growth in the third quarter by expanding 3 percent, according to the Commerce Department. Analysts expected 2.6 percent growth after the economy expanded 3.1 percent in the second quarter.

And, oil prices spiked more than 2 percent as Saudi Arabia signaled support for OPEC's oil production cut agreement beyond next March, and President Donald Trump attempts to void a nuclear agreement between the U.S., world powers and Iran.

International benchmark Brent crude rose 2 percent to as high as $60.53, its highest since July 2015.

American benchmark West Texas Intermediate climbed to as much as $54.02 -- a 2.5 percent increase to reach its highest value since March.