The market also rose for the month of July, with its standout achiever the Nasdaq composite index that climbed for a sixth straight month — a feat not seen in eight years.

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index completed a five-month winning stretch, something they hadn’t accomplished since 1999.

Upbeat earnings from Exxon Mobil and Procter & Gamble contributed to today’s advance, the market’s first in four days. Stocks did pull back from sharper gains in the last two hours of trading, something that often happens on the last trading of the month, when portfolio managers make last-minute adjustments to maximize returns and look good to shareholders.

Still, analysts said investors were enjoying a renewed sense of confidence that the economy is poised for robust growth in the second half of the year, as Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan predicted earlier this month during testimony before Congress.

“What this second-quarter report (on the economy) does is push more people in the camp that believes we do have an economy that is growing and recovering and we will see even stronger growth in the second half,” said Brian Bush, director of equity research at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock, Ark.

After climbing as much as 161.35 today in earlier trading, the Dow closed up 33.75, or 0.4 percent, at 9,233.80, according to preliminary calculations. The gain erased some of the 84.52 lost in the previous three sessions.

The broader market was also higher. The Nasdaq rose 14.23, or 0.8 percent, to 1,735.14, and the S&P advanced 2.82, or 0.3 percent, to 990.31.

The Nasdaq rose 6.9 percent in July, its sixth straight monthly win. The last time the Nasdaq had a streak that long was the 10 months from December 1994 through Sept. 1995.

For the month, the Dow rose 2.8 percent and the S&P added 1.6 percent.

Wall Street owed today’s gains largely to better-than-anticipated economic data. The Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy as measured by gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter, well ahead of the 1.5 percent pace forecast and the 1.4 percent clip seen in each of the previous two quarters.

Good earnings news also lifted the market. Exxon Mobil advanced 36 cents to $35.58 on second-quarter profits that surpassed Wall Street’s estimate by 6 cents a share.

Procter & Gamble rose 12 cents to $87.87 on fiscal fourth-quarter profits that were a penny a share higher than analysts predicted.

Semiconductors boosted the tech sector after Merrill Lynch upgraded a string of such stocks to “buy” from “neutral.” National Semiconductor advanced $1.50 to $26.42, while Microchip rose $1.59 to $22.35.