Today's Market Update with...

Ron Romaine, Value Line's Senior Industry Analyst

Following a good day in Europe, where 16 of the 18 national stock markets rose, Wall Street was also in the black. At noon, the Dow Jones Industrials had gained 28 points, to 10,670; the S&P was up 6, to 1156; the NASDAQ Composite had risen 11, to 2373; the Russell 2000 small cap index had tacked on 2 and change, to 677; and the equally weighted Value Line arithmetic index stood at 2462, up 13 points. Leading the Dow were Intel (INTC), General Electric (GE), Alcoa (AA), and Bank of America (BAC), advancing 1.1% to 3.3%. No Dow 30 stock was off nearly a percent. NASDAQ winners featured Nvidia (NVDA), Linear Technolgies (LLTC), Starbuck's (SBUX), and Millicom (MICC), up 3 to 3.4%. Teva (TEVA), Urban Outfitters (URBN), and Adobe (ADBE) gave up .9% to 1.4%.

Housing starts declined 6% in February, to an annual rate of 575,000 units. The near-month crude oil contract gained 2%, to $81.61 a barrel, and gold was up by the same margin, to $1124.60 an ounce.

Interest rates eased 2 to 3 basis points, to 3.68% for the 10-year Treasury note and 4.61% for the 30-year bond. The Federal Reserve will release its comments at around 2:15 this afternoon; we expect no change in the target interbank overnight lending rate, currently at 0 to .25%.