S&P 500 Comes Within a Point of Record High Close

Stocks closed with big gains on Wall Street after a solid jobs report for June, putting the Standard & Poor's 500 index within a point of its record high close reached a bit more than a year ago, the AP reports. The rally was extraordinarily broad. Nearly all of the stocks in the S&P 500 index rose Friday. Materials and industrial companies rose the most. DuPont and Caterpillar each rose 3%. Gap jumped 5% after reporting strong sales for June. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 250 points, or 1.4%, to 18,146. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 32 points, or 1.5%, to 2,129. The Nasdaq composite rose 79 points, or 1.6%, to 4,956. (More Dow Jones stories.)