Spurred on by strong earnings from JP Morgan Chase & Company and Intel, the Dow punched through the 10,000 mark today.

The Dow 10,000 is a psychological level. Very often traders pay attention to round numbers like 10,000. Breaking through often kicks off buy stops and that is an added push to the move. Traders also see strong earnings by two giant companies as a positive for the market and often follow along with the momentum.

Recapping, the market was last at 10,000 back in October when it broke that mark on the downside. The index is down 29.4% from its 2007 peak of 14,164.53.

Do you believe that the market will continue to move higher?

Major U.S. stock indices moved higher on Tuesday. As of 2 pm, the Dow was up 200 points or 1.7%, the Nasdaq was up 45 (2%) and the S&P 500 was up 20 (1.6%).

The declining price of oil was a significant factor, as crude futures fell $3 to the $122 per barrel level. The dollar rose against the major currencies, gaining 1% on the euro.

The big question, of course, is whether today's rally reflects a turn in the market. More likely, we are seeing a burst of enthusiasm driven by lower oil prices. But plenty of bad news hangs over the market, with more likely to come.

The macro-economic picture is still bleak, and getting bleaker. Layoffs are increasing -- Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) announced that it will cut 1,000 jobs, while Bennigan's and Steak & Ale filed for bankruptcy -- and the credit crisis shows no signs of abating. Housing prices continue to drop at an alarming rate.

So beware this and all the other rallies we've seen lately. This bear market is not over yet.

After my rant yesterday, The Dow throws a 280 point hissy fit!, resulting from my unhappiness about the behavior of the market response to the rumor mill, I was sort of happy today to find investors coming back to their senses ... maybe.

So I followed with I guess the Dow hissy fit was short lived, and now am troubled even though the market has responded positively to what I thought was bargain hunting, but turns out might also be more rumors and speculation about a cut in the interest rate that was fed by the fed, by Bernanke himself ... make up your mind already. Bernanke Wants Help for Homeowners, or so the story goes. It does not say how exactly help will come.

The harshest comment I received to my second post, which is not far from my own thinking, was from Cullen:

• The Fed should keep rates where they are!
  
  Let the greedy speculators and the reckless mortgage lenders and the foolish or careless borrowers take their lumps! The free markets NEED to adjust. Those in the lending business NEED to return to SOUND lending practices. We consumers NEED to learn a lesson from this. Live within your means!

A recent Wall Street Journal article blared Fast-Money Crowd Embraces ETFs, Adding Risk for Individual Investors. The article focused on the imperfection of exchange-traded funds as tracking devices for the indices whose performances they seek to mimic. The problem is that, because ETFs are traded like stocks, they go up and down based on supply and demand for the shares themselves. Traditional index mutual funds are simply adjusted at the end of each day to reflect the net asset value of the underlying stocks. As the article says:

The funds also are heavily used by the fast-money crowd such as hedge funds and big Wall Street traders. Combined with the effects of a 24-hour market and the unusual inner workings of ETFs, that trading can distort prices on days such as Feb. 27 and March 13 when the market swooned. Some investors who sold amid the turmoil got significantly less for their ETF shares than the underlying assets were worth.

It's quite true that this is a disadvantage of the funds -- if you decide to, like a lemming, dump your shares when everyone else is trying to as well. But history has demonstrated that panic-selling can only lead to disaster for investors. Where some might see disadvantages in the volatility of ETFs, savvier investors can profit from them. One strategy for avoiding being bitten by panic-selling in ETFs is to never buy when the price is at a substantial premium to the net asset value (the net value of the underlying securities held by the fund), nor sell at a large, one-time only discount. In funds that normally trade in a tight range around their NAV, these situations are signs of extremes in investor sentiment. When investors are dumping shares well below their NAV, that is a sign of panic.

As Benjamin Graham used to say "The secret of making money on Wall Street is to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy."

The DOW closed today at a new high of over 12,400, despite the airline stocks suffering a rough go of it due to rising oil prices. And yet despite the bad news on the oil front, the DOW rose to 12, 416, the highest its been since November 17th. That puts this venerable index up 16% for the entire year.

Some reasons for the spike include incredible quarterly profits from companies like Bear Stearns Cos, that handed out millions of dollars in bonuses to its employees. Unemployment was down as well, according to the Labor Dept., and that probably contributed to investor confidence that implies the economy was holding up despite negative news earlier in the week about Fed interest rates.

And just to show you how global interconnected the financial world is, indices in China, Australia, and New Zealand also all hit record highs today. There will be a lot of happy bankers and investors going to bed tonight.

Wall Street has the DJIA, Silicon Valley, the NASDAQ. Now gadget-happy geeks everywhere (yes, we resemble that remark) have their own benchmark: The Engadget Index. Announced today, our friends over at Engadget have assembled an assortment of their 50 favorite gadget stocks.



And today, on its first day of "trading," the Engadget Index was up $19.20 to $1552.94. Marked by especially good results from Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) (up $1.54, or 3.78$, to $42.30) and Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE:S) (up $1.18, a whopping 6.66%, to $18.90), Logitech International SA (ADR) (NASDAQ:LOGI) (up $1.15, 4.58%, to $26.27), and Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ:GRMN) (up $1.96, 3.70%, to $54.87). Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD), up 3.22% to $21.50, is also worth mentioning.

Only one stock in the new index was down any noticeable amount: NEC Corporation (ADR) (NASDAQ:NIPNY), down 19 cents or 3.54% to $5.24.

All in all, a great first day! Did Engadget have any impact on these stocks? Would you have chosen differently? Head over to Engadget and weigh in.

The headlines all sing a siren song of "Bulls" and "sentimentalists" and "optimism." Yet our readers seem more suspicious, looking at every piece of news with a jaded eye. My favorite comments come from Mr. noitall, who offers up a mix of value-minded cynicism that I particularly love.

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching the new trading high today of 12,125.16 (closing at 12, 116.91), an all-time record yet again, I have to know:

Are you an optimist or a cynic? Logical or sentimental? Bull or Bear? What does the record do for you?

As I start to type this story, it's 2:59 and the DJIA chart I just saw read 11999.97, the tiniest tick shy of yesterday's 12,000 milestone, and 11.76 points off the record close. [By the time I published the market had closed two points above the 12,000 mark.] I know, yawn! Everyone's doing the same story. Dow 12,000, milestones in history. Right?

Right, and wrong. Let's do something else here, in this time that seems fraught with cliche and over-valuation. So many Wall Street pundits are saying, watch out! There's a slowdown ahead. And surely, many of these valuations seem high. Too high. But in my opinion, there are just as many stocks that have room to grow.

I'm looking at the numbers and I've found five Dow stocks to stay away from, and five that may still have some legs.

Five with room to zoom:

• 3M Company (NYSE:MMM), $79.20 up 3.66% today; 52-week high $88.35; 52-week low $67.05. P/E 17.47. Latest quarter results show it is up 6% on LCD growth. I think that P/E is nice and low for a company which, despite its industrial roots, is really an innovative company that actually makes things that people want. A good 10% below the 52-week high sounds like lots of room to me.

I'm looking at my screen and I rub my eyes. Could it be? On the left-hand column I read a headline, "Slowing Economy Spurs Bond Rally." Over there in the side bar is the cute box that shows the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. The chart spikes peppily. "11610.55" is the bright number next to DJIA. "1330.60" reads the S&P 500 -- its five-year high. [Update: at market close, the S&P 500 had hit a brand-new five-year high of 1336.34, with the DJIA at its 2006 high and second-highest close ever, 16669.39.] The world is full of bright, happy green that seems to belie the sad economic data, the slow in advertising, the doom for American autos.

Could it be true?

It seems as if it is. One one side we have the DJIA and the S&P 500. The Dow's all-time high is 11,750 (140 90-ish points away), while the all-time closing high is only 11,722 (that's 111.45 52.61 points away from right now, if you're counting along with me). The S&P is raring to go, as well, creeping ever so slowly up towards its all-time high of 1,552 (although it's still 222 215 points away, 16.6% 16.1%). Strikingly, the current level is higher than the index has been for five-and-a-half years.

And yet, still, economy slumps, slows, dips, weakens. Why are consumers so confident, why are investors eagerly buying up stocks, while the rest of the indicators seem to warn them away? I've searched my brain for a creative answer, and can't discover one. What do you think?