Big day for stocks; Nasdaq at highest level since 2000

You still hear concern about a pullback, but for now there's just a lot of encouraging news. Today's rally was buttressed by good economic numbers (retail sales), a generally positive Fed statement, JP Morgan announcing a big boost in its dividend, and several large banks disclosing that they had passed the Federal Reserve's so-called stress tests (the Fed is about to report the results of those tests). Add to all that is Friday's strong employment news. At the close, the Dow was up 217 points, to 13,177. Lots of attention today on the Nasdaq closing above 3000 for the first time in more than 11 years. From the WSJ:

A handful of the 2,500 stocks in the index in particular have rolled out strong performances lately, such as Apple. Along with Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, these four tech giants account for 20 percent of the weight of the index. "The technology sector is as popular as ever, maybe not as crazy as it was back in the dot-com 1998-2000 timeframe, but technology firms are pretty popular this time around," said Paul Larson, chief equities strategist for Morningstar. "They also had strong underlying fundamentals to back up these prices."