Dow hits new 11-month high as builders advance

       US stocks rose on Friday as Procter & Gamble and major home builders advanced on positive brokerage comments and investors bet the economic recovery will be strong enough to sustain corporate profits.
       The Dow hit a new 11-month high and capped its best week in two months as Citigroup said Procter & Gamble,maker of Tide detergent and Pampers,is poised to win market share through aggressive pricing.
       Procter & Gamble's shares rose 3.2%to $57.32. The S&P consumer staples index, up 1.1%, was among the S&P 500's best-performing sectors.
       "It's sort of cautious optimism. What that's doing is leading to analyst upgrades, and we're seeing analysts raising earnings estimates for both this year and for calendar 2010 fairly consistently,"said Fred Dickson, market strategist at DA Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego,Oregon.
       The S&P 500 is up 58% since hitting a 12-year closing low in early March,partly because of strong second-quarter earnings and optimism that an economic recovery is gaining traction.
       Home builders Toll Brothers and KB Home both were upgraded by JP Morgan Securities, which said the housing sector will continue to recover over the next 24 months and drive the current rally in home builders' stocks.
       The Dow Jones industrial average was up 36.28 points, or 0.37%, at 9,820.20.The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 2.81 points, or 0.26%, at 1,068.30 while the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 6.11 points, or 0.29%, at 2,132.86.
       It was the market's second-straight week of gains. Last week, the Dow rose 2.24%, the S&P 500 gained 2.45% and the Nasdaq advanced 2.50%.
       "Quadruple witching," the expiration and settlement of four different types of September equity futures and options contracts, seemed "fairly quiet". Mr Dickson said, though the event sometimes leads to increased volatility.
       Oil company Chevron Corp also was upgraded.
       Credit Suisse said Chevron looks best equipped of the major oil companies to deliver growth "over the coming cycle to 2020". The stock rose 0.9% to $72.64.
       Toll Brothers shares rose 3.1% to $22.20, while KB Home's stock gained 2.6% to $20.21.
       The Dow Jones US Home Construction index rose 0.7%.
       On the Nasdaq, Palm Inc fell 3% to $14.01 a day after the company gave a tepid second-quarter sales forecast and said it plans to sell 16 million shares of common stock.
       Volume was heavy on the New York Stock Exchange, with 2.28 billion shares changing hands, well above last year's estimated daily average of 1.49 billion,while on the Nasdaq, about 3.16 billion shares traded, also far above last year's daily average of 2.28 billion.
       Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of three-to-two, while on the Nasdaq,14 stocks rose for every 13 that fell.