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Tom Price has resigned as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday. Sanders said in a statement that Price “offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.” Trump earlier Friday indicated that he was close to firing Price, whose private-jet use has caused a major scandal for the administration and angered Trump. Sanders said Trump will nominate Don Wright to serve as acting secretary as of Friday evening. Wright is currently deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former vice president of sales at Life Time Fitness Inc., and seven others with insider trading on Friday, alleging they used confidential information to purchase highly speculative out-of-the-money call options and sold them shortly after a newspaper reported the company was in advanced merger discussions with two private equity firms. The traders allegedly sold those options for profits of about $866,209. The SEC alleges that Shane P. Fleming, the Life Time Fitness sales executive learned of the merger discussions on or before Feb. 23, 2015 and tipped his friend and business partner Bret J. Beshey. Beshey allegedly used the information to profit and agreed to split those profits with Fleming. The SEC alleges Beshey tipped his friends Christopher M. Bonvissuto and Peter A. Kourtis with the understanding that both men would kick back a portion of their trading proceeds to Beshey. Kourtis allegedly tipped his friends Alexander T. Carlucci, Dimitri A. Kandalepas, Austin C. Mansur, and Eric L. Weller, and asked for a kickback of any profits they made from trading on the information, which they agreed to do. Weller allegedly gave Kourtis at least 10 pounds of marijuana instead of cash in return for the tip. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois also announced criminal charges against all eight defendants on Friday.

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U.S. stocks ended higher on Friday, with technology stocks leading the day’s gains as the sector extended its recent rise. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1% to 22,399. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 2,519. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.7% to 6,496. Both the S&P and the Nasdaq ended at closing records, as did the Russell 2000 , which added 0.2% on Friday. Among the day’s notable gainers, Facebook Inc. rose 1.2% while Alphabet Inc. , the parent company of Google, rose 0.9%. For the week, the Dow rose 0.2% and the S&P rose 0.7% in their third straight weekly advance. The Nasdaq rose 1.1%. Small-cap stocks were the big gainers of the week, with the Russell gaining 2.8% over the past five session. For the month of September, the Dow rose 2.1%, the S&P rose 1.9% and the Nasdaq rose 1.1%. For the quarter, the Dow rose 4.8% and the S&P was up 4%, with both rising for an eighth straight quarter. The Nasdaq rose 5.8% in its fifth straight quarterly advance.

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President Donald Trump said he’ll make a decision Friday night about firing Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, whose private-jet flights have drawn scrutiny. Trump called Price “a fine man” in comments to reporters at the White House. On Thursday, Price said he would reimburse taxpayers for a small portion of the cost of the flights he took.

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Federal Reserve Governor Jay Powell was interviewed by President Donald Trump for the top job at the U.S. central bank, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Trump also interviewed former Fed governor Kevin Warsh for the Fed chairmanship, officials said. Powell, a Republican, is a former top Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush and later became a partner at the Carlyle Group before joining the Fed in 2012. His term at the central bank does not expire until 2028. Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s term is set to expire early next year. Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont, said the interviews confirm his belief that Yellen will not be reappointed.

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Oil prices on Friday tallied a gain for the week, month and quarter, buoyed by concerns over crude supplies from the Kurdish region of Iraq and oil producers’ strong compliance with an output-cut agreement. November WTI crude added 22 cents, or 0.2%, for the session to settle at $51.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices based on the front-month contracts, rose about 7.7% for the month and climbed about 10.5% for the quarter, according to FactSet data.

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Gold prices finished lower on Friday as traders weighed the likelihood of success for Republican tax-cut proposals as well as expectations for another rate increase by the Federal Reserve before year-end. December gold lost $3.90, or 0.3%, to settle at $1,284.80 an ounce. It was down about 2.7% for the month, but up around 3.6% for the quarter.

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Advance ticket sales for “Blade Runner 2049” are significantly outselling those of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Martian” and “Gravity” for the same one-week period before their releases, according to movie ticket retailer Fandango. Distributed by Time Warner Inc.-owned Warner Bros., “Blade Runner 2049” has gotten rave reviews, garnering a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film, a sequel to Ridley Scott’s seminal 1982 film “Blade Runner,” was also voted by Fandango moviegoers as one of the top three most-anticipated films of the fall, along with “Justice League” and Walt Disney Co’s “Thor: Ragnarok.” “Blade Runner 2049’s” advance ticket sales indicate moviegoers are excited for the film and position it for a strong showing at the box office. “Gravity” raked in $723.2 million in worldwide box office sales, along with seven Oscars, in 2013. “The Martian” earned $630.1 million in 2015, and “Mad Max: Fury Road” earned $378.9 million and six Oscars the same year. The original “Blade Runner” grossed $32.9 million in box office sales in 1982, or $93.4 million when adjusted for inflation. Time Warner shares have gained nearly 6% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 index is up more than 12% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 13%.

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Baker Hughes on Friday reported that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil rose for the first time in four weeks, by 6 to 750 this week. The total active U.S. rig count, which includes oil and natural-gas rigs, also climbed by 5 to 940, according to Baker Hughes. November West Texas Intermediate crude was up 7 cents, or 0.1%, from Thursday at $51.63 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, little changed from the level it traded at before the data.

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Gymboree Corp. said Friday that it emerged from bankruptcy, less than four-months after the childrens apparel retailer file for Chapter 11 protection. The company had said earlier this month that its plan of reorganization had been confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, and that it had expected to complete its financial restructuring by the end of September. When the company announced the bankruptcy on June 11, it said the recapitalization would reduce debt by $900 million, and that the majority of stores would operate as usual. Since Gymboree went bankrupt, the SPDR S&P Retail ETF has gained 1.9% and the S&P 500 has climbed 3.5%.

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