NEW YORK, Jan 4, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Wall Street stocks posted strong gains Friday, bouncing back from a losing streak as investors looked towards policies from Donald Trump's incoming administration.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.8 percent to 42,732.13, and the broad-based S&P 500 Index rose 1.3 percent to 5,942.47.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 1.8 percent to 19,621.68.

"Investors are anticipating a business friendly administration from Trump and his staff," said Jack Ablin of Cresset Capital. Trump takes office January 20.

The strong gains also came as Microsoft said in a blog post Friday that it is on track to invest about $80 billion in fiscal year 2025 to build AI-enabled data centers to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world.

Major US stock indexes have slipped for several straight trading sessions, but received a boost Friday from advances in major companies' shares.

Survey data released early Friday also indicated that a US manufacturing slump showed some improvement last month, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

Among individual companies, US Steel shares lost 6.5 percent after President Joe Biden announced he was blocking its proposed acquisition by Nippon Steel.

The decision drew sharp criticism from both companies and came after a government panel failed to reach a consensus on whether the deal threatened US national security.