Wall Street rebounds on last day of the quarter

Technology, financial sectors lead rebound on Wall Street on last day of quarter

• Madlen Read and Sara Lepro, AP Business Writers
• Tuesday March 31, 2009, 11:47 am EDT

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street is turning higher as investors buy up technology and financial stocks to square their portfolios on the last day of the quarter.

Analysts are attributing much of the advance to large investors loading up on rising stocks to make their portfolios look good at the end of the first quarter, which ends on Tuesday.

Investors have shrugged off lackluster economic data and are snatching up some of the biggest names in technology and banking, including Google, International Business Machines, Bank of America and Citigroup.

At midday, the Dow Jones industrials are up 100 points at the 7,622 level. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 10 to 797, while the Nasdaq composite index is up 23 to 1,525.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street resumed its advance on the last day of the quarter as investors focused on economic data.

A measure of consumer confidence inched up in March after plummeting to historic lows in February, a private research group reported Tuesday.

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 26.0, from a revised 25.3 reading in February -- below expectations, but a small uptick nonetheless.

The market is coming off a two-day pullback after rallying on better-than-expected home sales, retail sales and durable goods data. The Dow Jones industrials have jumped 21 percent in less than three weeks following a government plan for cleaning up bad assets from banks and reassuring remarks from the CEOs of several banks who said their businesses did well in January and February.

If Wall Street can get more evidence that the economy is bottoming out, it has a better chance of making up the sharp losses logged this year. The Dow is still down 14.3 percent for 2009, but up 14.5 percent from its nearly 12-year low on March 9.

Recent data have indicated the economy is "still weak, still poor, but not on a declining trend," said Rob Lutts, president of Cabot Money Management. And that's enough to encourage him to buy stocks in industries such as energy and technology -- ones that usually turn around when the economy does.

"I'm hopeful that by the end of the year, conditions will have improved," Lutts said. With the market already pricing in a severe recession, he said, "I don't think we need a strong improvement to get the stock market going."

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 53.52, or 0.7 percent, to 7,575.54 in morning trading.

Broader stock indicators also gained. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.78, or 0.6 percent, to 792.31, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 18.09, or 1.2 percent, to 1,519.89.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 2.24, or 0.5 percent, to 418.21.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by about 3 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 182.7 million shares.

On the last day of the quarter, some "window dressing" buying may also be affecting the market. Portfolio managers that may have missed out on the recent rally want to be sure they aren't left behind, said Randy Frederick, director of trading at Charles Schwab.

"Imagine you're an institutional investor, you have a lot of cash on hand and missed the recent rally," he said. "Now, you don't want to be left behind in the next quarter. You probably want to put some of the cash to work."

The major indexes had dropped about 3 percent Monday as the White House rejected General Motors Corp.'s and Chrysler's turnaround plans, raising the possibility of an automaker bankruptcy.

On Tuesday, the S&P Case-Shiller index of 20 cities showed that U.S. home prices declined by record 19 percent in January from a year ago. The Chicago purchasing manager's index of business conditions dropped to a reading of 31.4 in March from 34.2 in February.

Bond prices were modestly higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.69 percent from 2.72 percent late Monday. The yield on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, was unchanged from late Monday at 0.18 percent.

Crude oil fell 37 cents to $48.04 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The dollar was lower against other major currencies. Gold also fell.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average fell 1.5 percent. In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 2.8 percent, Germany's DAX index rose 1.1 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 1.4 percent.