Although the stock market rocketed higher on Tuesday, that doesn’t disguise what was a very poor first quarter. The Dow Industrials shed 1,001.93 points (7.6%) over the first three months of the year - its worst quarter in five years. The Nasdaq Composite fared even worse, crumbling by 14% (a loss of 373.18 points). The broader S&P 500 lost 10% of its value (145.66 points). But considering it once slumped from a 52-week high of 1576.09 on October 11, 2007 to a 52-week low of 1,256.98 as recently as March 17 (the day of the Bear Stearns fallout) - a 20% plunge - one might say the index actually showed some pretty strong resilience to bounce back. Still, the index has now racked up five straight losing months.

Even as stocks soared on Tuesday, news filtered through from Switzerland of yet another enormous quarterly loss and billions of dollars in write-downs from one of the world’s biggest financial institutions. UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) will suck up a first-quarter loss of $12.1 billion, following write-downs of $19 billion. That brought the total amount of UBS write-downs over the past nine months to $37.4 billion - the largest of any bank - and was enough to force the resignation of Chairman Marcel Ospel.