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Stocks reach records again

NEW YORK - Stock indexes inched ahead to record highs Friday, barely, after a late-afternoon push erased losses from earlier in the day. Friday capped the fourth straight week of gains for the Standard & Poor's 500 index, its longest such streak since July.

NEW YORK - Stock indexes inched ahead to record highs Friday, barely, after a late-afternoon push erased losses from earlier in the day. Friday capped the fourth straight week of gains for the Standard & Poor's 500 index, its longest such streak since July.

Reports through the week showed that the economy is improving and corporate profits are growing more quickly than analysts expected. The encouraging data, along with hope for lower taxes and other business-friendly policies from Washington, pushed the S&P 500 to a 1.5 percent rise last week, its best weekly performance since the first week of January.

The S&P 500 rose 3.94 points Friday, or 0.2 percent, to 2,351.16. The Dow Jones industrial average edged up by 4.28 points, less than 0.1 percent, to 20,624.05 and also set a record. The Nasdaq rose 23.68, or 0.4 percent, to 5,838.58, its own all-time high.

Slightly more stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange.

The last two days have been lackluster for stocks, with the S&P 500 dipping on Thursday, in comparison to the strong run they had been on. That slowdown was more a result of investors looking to cash in some profits than on any fear or need to get out of the market, said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade.

"People don't want unnecessary risk heading into a three-day weekend," he said. "This is more about taking off risk than about aggressive selling."

U.S. markets will be closed Monday for Presidents' Day.

Kinahan pointed to relative calmness in the markets for the VIX index, which measures expectations for forthcoming volatility in the S&P 500, and for gold, a traditional landing spot when investors are nervous.

The dollar fell to 112.93 Japanese yen from 113.11 yen late Thursday. The euro fell to $1.0607 from $1.0677, and the British pound fell to $1.2416 from $1.2497.

Gold fell $2.50 to settle at $1,239.10 per ounce, silver fell four cents to $18.03 per ounce and copper fell one cent to $2.71 per pound.