S&P 500 Closed Above 1,900

U.S. stocks finished with solid gains on Friday, with the S&P 500 hitting a new closing high above 1,900, as investors welcomed better-than-expected new-home sales numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 63.19 points, or 0.38%, to 16,606.27 and finished the week 0.7% higher. The S&P 500 added 8.04 points, or 0.42%, to 1,900.53 and gained 1.2% over the week. The Nasdaq Composite was up 31.47 points, or 0.76%, to 4,185.81, clocking in a 2.3% gain over the week.

Sales of U.S. new homes recovered in April after slumping in the previous two months. But Americans are still buying new homes at a slower pace than they did a year ago. The Commerce Department said Friday that sales of new homes rose 6.4 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000. That compares with an upwardly revised annual pace of 407,000 in March, when purchases fell 6.9 percent.

Visa and MasterCard are renewing a push to speed the adoption of microchips into U.S. credit and debit cards in the wake of recent high-profile data breaches, including this week’s revelation that hackers stole consumer data from eBay’s computer systems.