Wall St calms down after explosive week

New York - US markets ended higher on Friday as trade calmed at the end of one of the most turbulent weeks on record.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.13%, the broader S&P 500 was up 0.53% and the Nasdaq Composite pushed up 0.61%.

Trade was buoyed by strong gains in Europe's markets after four countries instituted temporary bans on short-selling of financial stocks that helped to send the markets spinning over the past two days.

Also helping was positive data showing an 0.5% rise in US consumer spending in July over June, which suggested that fears of the economy turning toward recession might be overblown.

"All in all, as commodity price pressures have eased recently, the current trend of core retail sales is a positive signal for household consumption in the beginning of Q3," said Thomas Julien at Natixis.

Markets meanwhile shrugged of the second steep monthly fall in the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released on Friday, which hit a low not seen since May 1980 but may have been affected by turbulence in markets and the political battle over the debt ceiling in July.