2018.02.1521:00:00UTC+00U.S. Stocks Rally in Choppy Trading

Wall Street advanced for the fifth consecutive session on Thursday, as the major indexes extended their current winning streak. The move higher took place despite interest rates hitting multi-year highs.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed 306.88 points higher at 25,200.37, with Boeing as the biggest contributor of gains. The 30-stock index traded down 84 points at its session low.

The S&P 500 gained 1.2 percent to finish at 2,731.20, with utilities and tech as the best-performing sectors. The broad index was also on pace for its best weekly gain since 2013.

The Nasdaq composite rose 1.6 percent to 7,256.43 after falling as much as 0.2 percent. Gains in Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet helped lift the tech-heavy index higher. The Nasdaq was also poised for its best week since 2011.

Both the Dow and S&P 500 also broke above their 50-day moving averages, two key technical levels.

Investors focused on recent strong quarterly earnings, and expectations that more earnings growth is still to come due to newly implemented corporate and personal tax reductions.

The CBOE Volatility index, also known as Wall Street's “fear gauge,” increased to 19.57 points, but was well below the 50 point-mark it touched last week.

In corporate news, Apple Inc bounced 3.2 percent and contributed more than any other stock to gains on the S&P 500 after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made the iPhone maker its top investment.

Cisco Systems soared 4.7 percent after reporting better-than-expected earnings. The company also posted its first year-over-year revenue increase in more than two years.