Stocks finish mostly higher

Stocks finished a bumpy session mostly higher Friday after the government pledged to lend as much as $17.4 billion to U.S. automakers.

The Dow Jones industrial average finished down about 25 points, but the Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq composite indexes posted moderate advances, finishing higher for the second week in a row.

Stocks that rose outnumbered those that fell by about 5 to 3 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Although the session was choppy -- with the Dow rising as much as 182 points in early trading, then moving in and out of negative territory for much of the afternoon -- it was a relatively calm day on Wall Street compared with the wild swings experienced in September, October and early November.

In the early going, investors cheered the Bush administration’s pledge to provide General Motors and Chrysler with $13.4 billion in short-term financing plus $4 billion at a later date.

The aid resembles a bill that died in the Senate last week after being passed by the House.

The White House’s action “prevents the collapse of a very high-profile industry less than a week before Christmas,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors. “That’s not to say that these guys won’t collapse next March, but it takes it out of the headlines now, and takes the threat of an auto industry default off the table until next spring.”

GM shares jumped 83 cents, or 23%, to $4.49, while Ford Motor shares added 11 cents, or 3.9%, to $2.95. Chrysler is not publicly traded.

The Dow fell 25.88 points, or 0.3%, to 8,579.11. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 2.60 points, or 0.3%, to 887.88, while the Nasdaq composite index climbed 11.95 points, or 0.8%, to 1,564.32.

The Russell 2,000 index of smaller companies rose 1.5%.

For the week, the Dow ended down 0.6%, while the S&P; 500 finished up 0.9%, Nasdaq rose 1.5% and the Russell 2,000 gained 3.8%. All of the indexes remain down more than 35% for the year.

Since reaching multiyear lows on Nov. 20, the Dow is up 14% and the S&P; 500 is up 18%.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq was lifted Friday by big gains in shares of Oracle and Research in Motion, both of which released earnings late Thursday. Oracle’s profit weakened but its shares rose 7% as investors bet that the company would fare better than others as the economy struggles. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion rallied 11% after giving a better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue forecast.

Shares of some big banks fell after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of 11 major U.S. and European financial institutions.

Citigroup shares sank 5.5%, Morgan Stanley tumbled 4.8% and Bank of America lost 1.2%.

Yields on long-term Treasuries recovered from record lows. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.13% from 2.07% late Thursday.

The January contract for crude oil, which expired Friday, fell $2.35 to settle at $33.87, the lowest close in nearly five years.

The dollar surged against most other major currencies after falling early in the week in part because of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut Tuesday.