U.S. stocks posted best weekly performance since the Election Day, as the "Trump-rally" carried on and Wall Street has widely expected that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rate in its policy meeting next week.

For the week, all three major indices witnessed sharp increases, with the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq surging 3.1 percent, 3.1 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

Many analysts attributed much of this week's gains to the "Trump-rally" as they believed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's policies might boost economic growth.

As of Friday's close, the Dow has posted gains in 20 of the past 24 sessions and 14 record closes since the Nov. 8 election.

Meanwhile, the U.S. central bank will hold its policy meeting on Dec. 13-14. Analysts thought that the Fed raising rates in a week seemed a foregone conclusion, but the Federal Open Market Committee may struggle to communicate what it will do next.

New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley said earlier this week that he backs measured rate hikes if the U.S. economy stays on its current trajectory.

According to the CME Group's FedWatch tool, market expectations for a December rate hike were 97.2 percent.

The CBOE Volatility Index, often referred to as Wall Street's fear gauge, decreased 7.04 percent to end at 11.75 on Friday.

On the economic front, U.S consumer sentiment for December hit its highest level since January 2015.

The preliminary reading of the consumer sentiment for December rose to 98.0 from 93.8 in November, said the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment on Friday.

In the week ending Dec. 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims was 258,000, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week's unrevised level, the U.S. Labor Department reported.

The four-week moving average was 252,500, an increase of 1,000 from the previous week's unrevised average of 251,500.

The number of job openings was little changed at 5.5 million on the last business day of October, the U.S. Labor Department said Wednesday.

The U.S. goods and services deficit rose 6.4 billion U.S. dollars from September's revised reading to 42.6 billion U.S. dollars in October, generally in line with market consensus, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.

In a separate report, the department said that U.S. new orders for manufactured goods in October, up four consecutive months, increased 12.5 billion dollars, or 2.7 percent, to 469.4 billion dollars. This followed a 0.6 percent September increase.

The Non-Manufacturing Index, which measures activity in the U.S. service sector, registered 57.2 percent in November, 2.4 percentage points higher than the October reading and beating market consensus, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said in its monthly survey.

Overseas, European equities also rallied Friday after the European Central Bank's decision to leave interest rate unchanged. German benchmark DAX index at Frankfurt Stock Exchange inched up 0.22 percent, while British benchmark FTSE 100 Index added 0.33 percent.

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday decided that the interest rate on main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.00 percent, 0.25 percent and -0.40 percent, respectively.

The European central bank also extended its quantitative easing program until December 2017, but will reduce purchases to 60 billion euros (64 billion U.S. dollars) per month. Current asset purchases of 80 billion euros per month were due to end in March 2017 before the decision.

ECB President Mario Draghi said Thursday that the central bank could increase the monthly purchases if needed and that there is still no firm end date for the stimulus program.

In Asia, Tokyo shares closed higher Friday, with the Nikkei index briefly hitting the 19,000 line for the first time this year, due to strong European and U.S. stocks overnight.