US STOCKS-Wall St gains, progress in Trump's tax plan lifts hopes

* Senate passes budget plan that could pave the way for tax cuts

* PayPal (TLO: PYPL-U.TI - news) jumps after upbeat earnings forecast

* Indexes up: Dow 0.6 pct, S&P 0.4 pct, Nasdaq (Frankfurt: 813516 - news) 0.4 pct (Updates to late afternoon)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 20 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday after the Senate passed a budget resolution, lifting hopes that President Donald Trump's tax-cut plan may move forward.

The Senate's approval late Thursday of a 2018 budget blueprint could pave the way for Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without Democratic support.

The S&P 500 and the Dow, which climbed above 23,000 this week, were on track to post gains for a sixth straight week and the Nasdaq for a fourth straight week.

Some investors saw little reason to worry about the extended climb.

"This has been a healthy advance. It has been a slow, steady grind upward. There's been extraordinarily low volatility," said Hank Smith, co-chief investment officer at Haverford Trust in Radnor, Pennsylvania.

Consumer confidence remains elevated and regulatory relief has helped, he noted.

Financial stocks - expected to benefit from the administration's proposed policies - rose 1.1 percent and were the best performer of the 11 major S&P sectors.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 129.65 points, or 0.56 percent, to 23,292.69, the S&P 500 gained 11.28 points, or 0.44 percent, to 2,573.38 and the Nasdaq Composite added 26.54 points, or 0.4 percent, to 6,631.61.

Third-quarter earnings season is under way and 183 S&P 500 companies are expected to report earnings next week. So far, more than 70 percent of the 88 S&P 500 companies have beaten profit expectations.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) of General Electric (Euronext: GNE.NX - news) reversed an early drop and were last up 0.1 percent, although the company's results badly missed Wall Street's expectations.

PayPal's stock rose 4.9 percent after upbeat earnings.

Celgene (Swiss: CELG-USD.SW - news) slumped more than 10 percent after the company abandoned testing a drug to treat Crohn's disease.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.37-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.52-to-1 ratio favored advancers. (Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Dan Grebler)