Stocks Rise Despite Bank Worries Overseas

Bank worries from the other side of the Atlantic weighed on Wall Street on Friday, though the major indexes managed to finish in positive territory.

• The Dow rose 132 points, or 0.5%, to 32,237.
• The S&P 500 rose 22 points, or 0.5%, to 3,971.
• The Nasdaq rose 36 points, or 0.3%, to 11,823.
• All posted modest gains of about 1% for the week, notes CNBC.

On Friday, much of the focus was on Deutsche Bank, whose stock tumbled 8.5% in Germany, per the AP. Other big European banks also fell Friday, including a 5.5% drop for Germany’s Commerzbank, a 5.3% fall for France's BNP Paribas, and a 3.5% loss for UBS. Earlier this month, shares of and faith in Swiss bank Credit Suisse fell so much that regulators brokered a takeover of it by rival UBS. Credit Suisse faced a relatively unique set of longstanding troubles. But the second- and third-largest US bank failures in history earlier this month have cast a harsher spotlight across the entire banking industry.

"I think that the market overall is neither frightened nor optimistic—it's simply confused," George Ball, president at Sanders Morris Harris, tells CNBC. "The price action for the last month-and-a-half, including today, is a jumble without any direction or conviction." Bank stocks were mixed on Wall Street, including a 1.4% drop for JPMorgan Chase and a 0.9% gain for Bank of America. (More stock market stories.)