Stocks rose to new records yesterday as a strong employment report fed investors' enthusiasm and capped a week of extraordinary strength on Wall Street.

At the close of trading, the Dow was up 72.82 points, or by 0.7 per cent, at 11,139.24, easily topping its previous record close of 11,107.19, set on May 13th. The Standard and Poor's 500 rose 10.26 to 1,391.22, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 34.83 to 2,741.01.

NYSE volume totalled 583.74 million shares compared with 828.55 million in the previous session. The NYSE composite index rose 3.79 to 655.12, and the American Stock Exchange composite index rose 7.47 to 802.42.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 2.09 to 456.51.