Wall Street ends wild week with another record

Investors seem upbeat about earnings, takeover activity

NEW YORK - Wall Street ended an extraordinary and record-setting week Friday by surging higher again, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 index past a trading high set in March 2000 and thrusting the Dow Jones industrial past 13,900 for the first time.

Both the S&P and the Dow logged record closes for the second straight day and the Dow’s gains put the blue chip index within about 70 points of 14,000. But the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index lagged both in Friday’s session as it has in the broader recovery from the dot-com collapse at the start of the decade.

In a week that saw the Dow swing more than 450 points and rise 283 points in Thursday’s session alone, investors grappled with unease over soured subprime loans and the broader economy before casting off such concerns and bidding stocks higher amid signs consumers might yet again pull through and give Wall Street reason to climb higher