US stocks finished Friday higher across all major indices, capping a strong finish to the trading week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average led the advance with a gain of 423.06 points, or 0.83%, to close at 51,660.18. The S&P 500 rose 46.18 points, or 0.59%, to 7,811.54, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 172.83 points, or 0.64%, to 27,366.17. The Russell 2000 added 12.85 points, or 0.46%, to 2,806.98, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 157.34 points, or 0.51%, to 30,883.15.

The four benchmarks track different slices of the market — the Dow covers 30 large US companies, the S&P 500 spans 500 large caps, the Russell 2000 measures small caps, and the Nasdaq 100 holds the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq — so their synchronized rise pointed to participation across those rather than strength confined to one corner of the market.

Fourth straight weekly gain for the Nasdaq

All three major indices ended the week higher. The Dow rose 0.93%, recording its biggest weekly percentage gain since the week ended August 7. The S&P 500 gained 1.15%, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.64%.

The Nasdaq's four consecutive weekly gains mark its longest winning run since the six-week streak that ended May 8. Weekly streaks are watched as a gauge of persistence because they test whether gains can hold from Friday close to Friday close rather than surviving only within a single session. Despite the selling seen earlier in the week, buyers preserved another weekly advance and made a push into the Friday close. The next question is whether they can build on it.

Software and cybersecurity lead the gainers

Beneath the surface, software and cybersecurity stocks attracted buyers. Moderna led the list of gainers with a 14.21% surge, and there were sizable advances across software, cybersecurity, and selected technology names:

• Moderna: up 14.21%
• Snowflake: up 7.42%
• Ambarella: up 7.23%
• Datadog: up 7.11%
• Roblox: up 5.62%
• Ciena: up 5.58%
• Alibaba: up 5.36%
• Palantir: up 5.17%
• Palo Alto Networks: up 5.09%
• Oracle: up 4.69%
• CrowdStrike: up 4.57%
• Coinbase: up 4.30%

Those gains comfortably outpaced the broader indices. The buying reached several corners of the software stack: Snowflake and Datadog sell cloud data platforms, Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike are cybersecurity specialists, and Oracle and Palantir operate on the enterprise software and data-analytics side. Moderna's lead was notable in its own right, as the biotech sat outside the technology-heavy list behind it. Software and cybersecurity provided several pockets of strength, while Ambarella, a chip designer, stood out against declines in a number of other chip-related shares.

The rally did not lift every stock

AT&T was the biggest decliner on the list, falling nearly 10% — a slide that dwarfs the S&P 500's 0.59% gain on the day. Deere also came under pressure, and several semiconductor and hardware names moved lower:

• AT&T: down 9.85%
• Hess Midstream Partners: down 5.10%
• Deere: down 4.85%
• Chipotle Mexican Grill: down 3.37%
• Arm: down 3.27%
• Intel: down 2.22%
• 3M: down 2.22%
• Super Micro Computer: down 2.13%
• AMD: down 2.03%
• Netflix: down 1.77%
• SanDisk: down 1.71%

The decliners mapped the hardware side of technology: Arm licenses chip designs, Intel and AMD make processors, SanDisk produces flash memory, and Super Micro Computer builds servers, meaning the pullback stretched across the chip-to-hardware chain rather than clustering in a single name. The divergence within technology was notable: buyers were active in several software names, but that enthusiasm did not extend uniformly across the semiconductor group.

Index strength does not guarantee individual stock gains

A higher Nasdaq gives traders useful context, but it does not guarantee that every technology stock will move higher alongside it. Because indices are aggregates, headline moves can coexist with sharp differences underneath, and Friday's session illustrated the split: Snowflake and Datadog each gained more than 7%, while Arm and AMD declined — same market, very different results.

As the source analysis notes, an individual stock's own price action defines the bias and risk for a trade, with support, resistance, and moving-average levels marking the thresholds to watch, and the broader market serving only as the backdrop. Support and resistance are price zones where buying or selling has previously emerged, and a moving average tracks the average closing price over a set number of sessions, giving those thresholds a concrete reference.