Daily Insight

U.S. stocks gained some ground on Tuesday amid growing optimism an improving economy will justify an extension of the year-long market rally, or so it was written by the financial press. Stocks were considerably higher for most of the session, but slid to negative territory late in the day before bouncing back above the cutline 25 minutes ahead of the closing bell.

As stocks grind higher and attempt to break past the near-term highs hit in January, the latest NFIB small business survey illustrated that small biz owners are not so ebullient about things and the IBD Economic Optimism reading for March suggested that things are not quite right with the world. Both surveys fell. The NFIB survey remains stuck at a level that’s well below the marks hit during the past two economic contractions and the Personal Financial Outlook segment of the IBD survey fell to the lowest level since February 2009 – a period when everything but the safest of assets was getting hammered. More on the NFIB report below the jump.

News from Cisco Systems that they’ll roll out a heavy-duty router capable of 12 times the capacity of rival equipment helped boost information technology and telecom shares. The router will allow internet providers to carry data traffic at speeds 100 times faster than most home connections today and able to direct traffic based on the priority of the data – this thing is all about video.

Basic material, utility and consumer staples stocks were among the session losers.

The dollar rallied after Fitch Ratings warned about deteriorating credit quality In Europe, which prompted traders to seek refuge in the greenback as they sold euros and pounds.

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