Stocks gain as Bernanke, GDP reassure investors

Traders were also encouraged by a downward revision in second-quarter economic growth Friday that wasn't as bad as economists had expected. The Dow Jones industrial average and other indexes all gained more than 1 percent. (...)

In economic news, the Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product grew at a 1.6 percent rate in the April-to-June period. That's still way down from its earlier estimate of 2.4 percent but not as bad as the 1.4 percent expected by economists.

"These are terrible numbers," Kim Caughey, equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, said. "But they weren't frighteningly horrible."