Standouts in the broad run-up included shares of Best Buy , up 11.3 percent to $37.24 after the electronics chain’s quarterly profit topped estimates and its yearly outlook boosted optimism about consumer spending.

Retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc was among the top boosts on the Dow, rising more than 2 percent to $52.88, while the S&P retail index gained nearly 5 percent.

Shares of natural resources companies rose along with higher commodity prices. Shares of steel maker Nucor rose 5.6 percent to $41.25 and U.S. Steel Corp was up 5.9 percent to $24.86.

“Obviously the tide is shifting. We’ve gone from every piece of news being incrementally bad to not as bad as expectations,” said Stephanie Giroux, Chief Investment Strategist at TD Ameritrade in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“The fact that collectively we are starting to see things less negative is very significant.”

The Dow Jones industrial average added 158.42 points, or 2.04 percent, to 7,908.23. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 16.78 points, or 2.06 percent, to 830.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index jumped 47.47 points, or 3.10 percent, to 1,576.42.

At the current pace, the S&P 500 could have its biggest monthly gain in 22 years, as stocks extend a three-week rally off 12-year lows.

Investors were relieved to see fair demand for $24 billion of U.S. debt offered after a poor auction a day earlier raised fears the government would have trouble funding its plans to help the economy recover.

Shares of banks pared losses after the auction, with JPMorgan down 1 percent to $28.27, having fallen as low as $27.65, while the KBW bank index fell 0.4 percent.

Government data showed the U.S. economy contracted slightly less than expected in the fourth quarter, although corporate profits in the same quarter plunged by the biggest margin since 1994. The number of workers collecting state unemployment benefits rose to a record in the latest week.

Recent better-than-expected housing and retail sales data has given rise to hopes that the recession-stricken economy was starting to show signs of life.

March 26 (Reuters)

So Easy You Could Start Investing Tomorrow

The investing public is already in the know when it comes to exchange traded funds (ETFs). Your average Main Street investor can tell you ETFs cover certain market sectors or styles of investing. Many even realize there are ETFs that cover the international markets.

However, it’s not always publicized that you can easily use these products as pure currency plays. These days, you can buy exchange traded funds that are pure currency plays on all the major world currencies.

Currently you can buy eight major currency ETFs. These include the euro (FXE), British pound (FXB), Mexican peso (FXM), Swedish krona (FXS), Australian dollar (FXA), Canadian dollar (FXC), Japanese yen (FXY) and Swiss franc (FXF). These eight currencies have interest rates ranging from 7.50% on the Mexican Peso to a low of 0.50% on the Japanese Yen. The symbols for most of them are very easy to remember too.

You can invest in these revolutionary products with any standard brokerage account the same way you would buy shares of IBM or Google. For example, you could call up Charles Schwab, E*Trade, Ameritrade, Merrill Lynch, etc., and buy a currency ETF tomorrow.

Bet on Your Favorite Offshore Country with Their Currency

So if you think any one of these countries has a bright economic future and will go up over time, you can trade that opinion.

For instance, for a long time now Jack Crooks and I both have been bullish on the Australian dollar due to its high growth, high inflation, high interest rates, low unemployment and demand from China. You can see from the chart below that the currency has really taken off and done well.

The Land Down Under Stays On Top!

So if you’re bullish on Australia and think it’s going up, buy a comfortable amount of the Currency Shares Australian Dollar Trust (traded on the NYSE as symbol FXA). It’s that simple.

Any way you slice it, currency investing has never been easier.

SEAN HYMAN, Currency Analyst

EDITOR’S NOTE: These days, there are literally dozens of interesting ways to invest your portfolio outside the dollar – from safe, stable long-term currency plays (that guarantee you never lose a dime) to sexy foreign-exchange trades. Whatever your investment style, our 33 experts will explain exactly how to maximize your retirement fund and diversify your investment portfolio out of the sinking buck this May at our Total Wealth Symposium. Still haven’t reserved your spot at this event? Sign up before Monday, April 21st and save an extra US$150 off the attendance fee. Click here.

“Who benefits?” as the criminal lawyer demands of the jury. And curiously enough, at first glance at least, the lawyers look set to clean up once more.

“Investors and their lawyers filed 70 securities-fraud class actions in the first quarter,” reports Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com, “almost the same number that were filed in the first half of 2007, according to NERA Economic Consulting, which tracks the filing of these complaints.”

Twenty-six of the 70 new cases in 2008 to date are linked to the sub-prime disaster, with Bear Stearns cited alongside J.P.Morgan, Lehman Brothers, T.D.Ameritrade Morgan Stanley and 14 other firms.

“The increase in filings continues a trend that began in the second half of last year,” says Portfolio.com, quoting NERA. “That spike pushed class-action filings up 58% in 2007, compared with the year earlier. Plaintiffs filed 207 cases last year, versus 131 in 2006.”

Thus we’re left yet again here at BullionVault wishing that legal firms were listed stocks, rather than private partnerships! Outside the courts, is there anyone climbing ahead on this mess of defaults, missed margin calls, foreclosures and lost jobs?

Investment bank staff are already pretending they’ve had a round-the-world trip planned for this summer since, oh, since they realized investment banking wasn’t for them anyway. Latest estimates in the City of London put the losses between 6,500 and 30,000 by autumn next year – almost twice the kill-rate of the Tech Stock Crash.

Over in the plush hedge-fund suites a mile or two west in Mayfair, Plexus Partners lost one-third of its value since January after screwing up its arbitrage trades. Another crazy-named hedge fund – Polygon – has tried to stop its investors withdrawing their cash to defend its future. And sticking to English, rather than Latin, failed to save Russell Investments in New York from closing two of its three hedge funds this week. They dumped two-thirds of their value inside six months.

Only global-macro hedge funds showed any real gains so far this year, according to Hedge Fund Review, returning an average of 11.5% in the first 10 weeks. But given they’ve had to wait six years for a decent surge (at last!) in asset-price volatility to start attracting new business, it hardly seems worth the bother.

Sitting tight at the other end of that see-saw called risk, meantime, cash savers made a little on interest rates thanks to the “dash for cash” by banks across the world, but they gave it all back to inflation and sleepless nights, even with Federal deposit insurance sitting behind the first $100,000 of potential losses.

Money-market fund managers did well to start with, but new savers turned tail last week, reports Forbes, sucking out $7.2 billion as stories spread of fund values slipping below the dollar. Higher-return funds like Schwab’s YieldPlus got caught in a “death spiral” of plunging asset prices, says the Motley Fool. And now the annualized yield offered by apparently “interest-bearing” six-month CDs ticked down from 1.95% to 1.87% this week, says BankRate.com. So don’t all rush in at once!