NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / February 6, 2017 / The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its best trading day in 2017 as bank stocks surged on the potential of lower financial regulations. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 0.94 percent to close at 20,071.46, while the S&P 500 gained 0.73 percent to close at 2,297.42. On Friday, President Trump signed executive orders for a review of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was put in place to tighten regulation on financial institutions following the 2008 financial crisis, and to halt an Obama-era "fiduciary rule". The SPDR KBW Bank ETF spiked 2.53 percent on Friday.

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"We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because, frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, who have nice businesses who can't borrow money. They just can't get any money because the banks just won't let them borrow, because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank," President Trump said Friday at a meeting Friday before signing the orders.

"Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we're not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year," said Gary Cohn, White House National Economic Council, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "The banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers."

Let's Take a Closer Look at Friday's Major Benefactors

Goldman Sachs Group's shares spiked 4.57 percent to close at $240.95 a share Friday. The stock traded between $234.20 and $241.11 on volume of 7.38 million shares traded. The company reported earnings of $2.35 billion, or $5.08 a share, compared to earnings of $1.27 a share in same quarter a year ago when Goldman Sachs trimmed earnings by about $1.5 billion due to a mortgage-bond settlement. Revenues totaled $8.17 billion for the fourth quarter of 2016, an increase of 12 percent year-over-year.

Goldman has also been trying to cut costs, and it started a program last year to slash $700 million from annual expenses, and the company said that it exceeded that target, taking out $900 million in expenses by the end of the year. Analyst expectations had called for earnings of $4.82 a share on revenues of $7.72 billion in the fourth quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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KeyCorp shares gained 2.97 percent to close at $18.37 a share Friday. The stock traded between $17.93 and $18.44 on volume of 11.75 million shares traded. The company reported adjusted earnings of $0.31 per share for the fourth quarter of 2016, an increase of 14.8 percent year-over-year and above Zacks consensus estimate of adjusted earnings of $0.29 per share. Revenues totaled $1.57 billion for the fourth quarter of 2016, an increase of 43 percent year-over-year and also above Zacks consensus estimate of $1.45 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2016, Key had average assets of $136 billion compared to $96.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015.

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Today's Research Coverage Includes:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS)

KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY)

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