Investors got the reassurance they wanted Thursday after the Commerce Department reported the first economic uptick in a year.

Stocks and many exchange-traded funds came close to rebounding from recent losses as gross domestic product rose 3.5% for the third quarter.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 200 points at 9962, its best one-day gain since July. The Nasdaq rose 38 points to 2098 and the S&P 500 ticked up 23 at 1066.

The excitement over the GDP data more than offset the impact of a smaller-than-expected drop in weekly jobless claims reported by the Labor Department.

Gross domestic product rose by a higher-than-forecast seasonally adjusted 3.5% annual rate July through September, the Commerce Department said Thursday in its first estimate of third-quarter GDP. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast 3.2% GDP growth during the summer.

The rise in GDP was the first since the second quarter of 2008. It served as an unofficial confirmation that the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression has ended. The purveyor of the official word on recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research, declared the slump began in December 2007. The private, nonprofit research group has yet to announce an ending date.

The GDP gain was driven by consumer spending, which rose by 3.4% in the third quarter, compared with a 0.9% drop in the April-to-June period. Consumer spending contributed 2.36 percentage points to GDP growth.

Meanwhile, initial claims for jobless benefits declined by 1,000 to 530,000 in the week ended Oct. 24. The previous week's level was unrevised at 531,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a larger decrease of 6,000 claims.

Oil futures rebounded on the Nymex after a Wednesday slide. As of 4:03 p.m., front month futures contracts were up $2.50 at $79.96 a barrel.

For a detailed rundown on Thursday s trading session see our market story.

Winners

Brazilian stocks surged too, as energy names got a boost, sending the iShares MSCI Brazil Index fund up 7.7%. Financial shares also rallied and the SPDR KBW Insurance fund rose 5.5%

Shorting the emerging markets with lots of leverage was the wrong play Thursday, as the Direxion Daily Emerging Markets Bear 3X Share shed 12.7%. The flight to stocks knocked back the iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond fund by 1.1%.

Thursday s Industry Headlines

Launching Pad
A new exchange-traded fund that will invest only in Oklahoma-based companies, mostly in the energy sector, began trading Thursday. The OOK fund will track the SPADE Oklahoma Index, made up of Oklahoma-based companies with a minimum market capitalization of $100 million. As of Sept. 30, the index posted year-to-date gains of 37.8 percent. The index of 29 companies is weighted, but no single company can account for more than 10% of the fund portfolio. The fund charges an annual expense ratio of 0.85%.

UBS on Thursday launched its UBS E-TRACS Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index Total Return exchange-traded note, which tracks the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index, a broadly diversified index of 19 commodity futures.

The fund charges an annual expense ratio of 0.50%. The DJ-UBS index has lower exposure to energy than other commodity indexes, and more exposure to the agricultural market.

Friday s Notebook

Earnings and Conference Calls
A.H. Belo, Alcatel-Lucent, All Nippon Airways, Allete, Alliant Energy, Ameren, American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Aon, Arch Coal, Bank of Smithtown, Barnes Group, BasicNet, BioScrip, Calpine, Chevron, Cogeco Cable, Constellation Energy Group, Coventry Health Care, Cummins, Dominion Resources, Domtar, Dorman Products, Duke Energy, Est e Lauder, First City Monument Bank, Gartner, Graham, Harmony Gold Mining, I-Flex Solutions, IntegraMed America, iStar Financial, ITT, Kyocera, Lance, Lincoln Electric Holdings, Macatawa Bank, Magellan Health Services, MDU Resources, MoneyGram International, OneBeacon Insurance Group, Penske Automotive Group, Progress Energy, Regency Centers, Sanofi-Aventis, Simon Property Group, Sony, Tim Hortons, Tree.com, UIL Holdings, Ultra Petroleum, Valtech, Washington Post, Weyerhaeuser Co.

Economic Data
8:30 a.m. Personal Income and Outlays
8:30 a.m. Employment Cost Index
9:45 a.m. Chicago PMI
9:55 a.m. Consumer Sentiment
3:00 p.m. Farm Prices