S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite and DJIA Rise Slightly, Resuming Stocks' Recent Rebound

Stocks traded slightly higher Friday afternoon as continued tame economic data allowed markets to extend a multiday rebound that reversed Wall Street's big Aug. 2-5 sell-off.

The Nasdaq Comp rose 60.11 points (0.3%) to trade at 17,654.6 shortly after 1 p.m. ET. The SPX followed with a gain of 13.39 ticks (0.2%) to 5,556.61, while the DJIA added 113.72 points (0.3%) to hit 40,676.78.

The gains allowed stocks to extend a recent upward trend that had reversed a big pullback that Wall Street saw Aug. 2-5 following weaker-than-expected July U.S. jobs data.

That report sent the market's main indexes down some 5% over two sessions on fears that the Federal Reserve's 2+ years of higher interest rates had overshot their inflation-fighting target and pushed the U.S. economy towards recession.

However, tamer data since then let markets recover all of those losses and more as figures pointed toward an economy that's neither heading toward recession nor facing continued high inflation. Wall Street hopes that means the Fed can cut interest rates for the first time in years at next month's policy meeting.

The latest positive economic data came Friday morning, when the University of Michigan's monthly Consumer Sentiment Survey showed Americans are more confident about the economy. The survey's index rose to 67.8 in August, up from 66.4 in July and better than the 66.9 that analysts had forecast.

Among individual stocks making significant moves gainers as of shortly after 1 p.m. ET included:

Meanwhile, stocks with large losses as of shortly after 1 p.m. ET included: