NEW YORK, Feb 22: Stocks rallied on Friday, capping a second straight week of gains, as the expiration of February options and hopes that war may be averted helped push share prices higher.

There was some unwinding going on that caused that late rally. It’s not unusual to see the market move on expiration day because there’s arbitrage that needs to be unwound, said Todd Clark, head of listed trading at Wells Fargo Securities.

Helping to fuel the rally was the simultaneous expiration of stock options and stock index options, which often leads to additional volatility. The expirations can cause wild swings in prices as traders close out their positions, sometimes affecting underlying stock prices and the market.

Much of this rally going on today is partly due to options-related trading and partly due to the oversold position we had last week, said James Park, a trader at Lance Zipper.

The market got a further boost following comments from an Iraqi official that Baghdad was willing to hold talks with the United States.

In an Iraqi television interivew, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Iraq was ready for dialogue with the American administration to build economic ties and cooperation if it dropped its plans to invade his country.

News of the comments sent the markets higher, said John Licata, senior market strategist at BrokerageAmerica.

You can’t treat the overseas stories with a grain of salt, Licata said. People feel more at ease that there may not be a war.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 103.15 points, or 1.30 per cent, at 8,018.11, according to the latest available figures. During the day, the Dow average swung 185 points between its high and its low. The S&P 500 Index gained 11.07 points, or 1.32pc, to 848.17, after hitting a low of 831.48 earlier. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index gained 17.79 points, or 1.34pc, to end at 1,349.02.

Advancers outnumbered decliners on the New York Stock Exchange by a ratio of about 22 to 9. On the Nasdaq, about 20 issues rose for every 12 that fell. Roughly 1.37 billion shares changed hands on the Big Board, while volume on the Nasdaq totaled roughly 1.32 billion.

For the week, the Dow is up 1.38 per cent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 is up 1.59 per cent. The Nasdaq is up 2.96 per cent.

US Coast Guard officials said the facility was owned by Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.

The second most actively traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange was SBC Communications, which ended down 57 cents, or 2.68 per cent, at $20.73. On Thursday, shares of SBC Communications and other telephone companies fell after federal regulators kept in place rules that force carriers to provide rivals with low-priced access to their telephone networks.—Reuters