U.S. stocks posted weekly gains as investors digested Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell's speech as well as a batch of key economic data.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average booked a 0.5 percent climb, the S&P 500 logged a 0.9 percent gain, and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced by 1.7 percent.

Powell delivered a speech on Friday at the Jackson Hole Symposium in Wyoming, where leading central bankers are meeting to discuss the future of monetary policy.

"If the strong growth in income and jobs continues, further gradual increases in the target range for the federal funds rate will likely be appropriate," said Powell.

On Wednesday, the U.S. central bank released the minutes of its latest monetary policy meeting, where Fed officials saw an escalation in international trade disputes as a potentially "consequential downside risk" for the U.S. economy.

"Participants observed that if a large-scale and prolonged dispute over trade policies developed, there would likely be adverse effects on business sentiment, investment spending, and employment," said the minutes of the Fed's July 31-Aug. 1 meeting.

While many Fed officials signaled that the central bank was ready to raise interest rates as soon as next month, some worried that current trade disputes could force the central bank to rethink its interest rate hike plans.

Multiple media outlets on Monday reported that U.S. President Donald Trump said he would continue criticizing the Fed should it continue to raise short-term interest rates, which the central bank has indicated it will do at a steady clip.

On the economic front, new orders for manufactured durable goods in July decreased 4.3 billion U.S. dollars or 1.7 percent to 246.9 billion dollars, said the Commerce Department on Friday. The decrease followed a 0.7 percent increase in June.

Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.2 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 1.0 percent.

U.S. weekly jobless claims slipped by 2,000 to 210,000 last week despite the ongoing trade worries, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The 4-week moving average was 213,750, a decrease of 1,750 from the previous week's unrevised average.

On the earnings front, the second-quarter earnings season is coming to a close.

The S&P 500 has seen 79.5 percent of companies report earnings above expectations. This is the highest rate of out-performance on record, going back to the first quarter of 1994, said Thomson Reuters.

As a result, second quarter year-on-year earnings expectations have risen to 24.7 percent, which is the highest second quarter earnings growth rate since second quarter of 2010.

While earnings growth for the quarter benefits from tax cuts, the underlying revenue growth of 9.4 percent shows that there is real fundamental growth within the index, according to Thomson Reuters.