Stocks rose Friday for a fourth straight day following more encouraging comments from bank executives and better-than-expected trade data.
Reports that Citigroup Inc.'s chairman Richard Parsons said the bank doesn't need additional government support after receiving three rounds of emergency funding helped lift financial stocks.
The reports came a day after Bank of America Corp.'s chief executive Ken Lewis said his bank was profitable in January and February, extending a streak of optimism about financial shares that began on Tuesday when Citigroup said it was having its best quarter since 2007.
The three-day rally that ensued has lifted the Dow Jones industrialsnearly 10 percent.
The market has been quick to embrace the encouraging signs about the financial system after weeks of unrelenting selling spurred on by concerns that the government's efforts to break a freeze in lending weren't working.
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