US stocks resume rise with Dow clearing 16,000; S&P 500 above 1,800

U.S. stocks gained on Monday, with the S&P 500 and Dow industrials at or near record highs, as Wall Street weighed a measure of builder sentiment coming in below expectations against the potential implications for the Federal Reserve's monetary policy.

Underlying gains that took the Dow above 16,000 for the first time and the S&P 500 above 1,800 is ongoing optimistic about stimulus from the Fed. "The market is very Fed oriented," said Paul Nolte, managing director at Dearborn Partners.

	Name	Price		Change	%Change
DJIA	Dow Jones Industrial Average	16002.12		40.42	0.25%
S&P 500	S&P 500 Index	1798.12		-0.06	0%
NASDAQ	Nasdaq Composite Index	3982.08		-3.89	-0.10%

Benchmark indices initially trimmed their rise after the release of the National Association of Home Builders/Well Fargo Housing Market Index, which found home builder confidence to be flat this month from a downwardly revised level of 54 the prior month.

"Every question gets answered with what does this mean to the Fed? The builders confidence falling below forecasts means the Fed is going to stay in the market," said Nolte, downplaying the survey's impact.

After clearing 16,000 for the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to an intraday record of 16,030.28. Boeing led blue-chip companies on the rise, after the plane maker received more than 250 orders for its revamped 777 jet at an airshow in Dubai.

The S&P 500 also surpassed a psychological hurdle, rising above 1,800 for the first time, with industrials and financials pacing sector gains and utilities and consumer staples the worst performing of its 10 industry groups. It set an intraday record of 1,802.37.

Via: CNBC

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Graham: Obama's Cliff Meeting is Political Theater

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were to meet on Friday for the first time since November with no sign of progress in resolving their differences over the federal budget and low expectations for a fiscal cliff deal before Jan. 1.

Instead, members of Congress are increasingly looking at the period immediately after the Dec. 31 deadline to come up with a retroactive fix to avoid the steep tax hikes and sharp spending cuts that economists have said could plunge the country into another recession.

"It's feeling very much to me like an optical meeting than a substantive meeting," said Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, noting that it was not a sign of urgency to set a meeting for mid-afternoon with a deadline just days away.

"Any time you announce a meeting publicly in Washington, it's usually for political theater purposes," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on Thursday on Fox News.

"When the president calls congressional leaders to the White House, it's all political theater or they've got a deal. My bet is all political theater," said Graham, adding that he did not believe an agreement could be reached before the deadline.

With taxes on all Americans set to rise when rates established under former President George W. Bush expire on Dec. 31, lawmakers would be able to come back in January and take a more politically palatable vote to cut some of the tax rates.

U.S. stocks fell on Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 0.48 percent as investors fretted about the lack of certainty.

But some in the market were resigned to Washington going beyond the New Year's Day deadline, as long as a serious agreement on deficit reduction comes out of the talks in early January.

"Regardless of whether the government resolves the issues now, any deal can easily be retroactive. We're not as concerned with Jan. 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, a Mountain View, California-based senior money manager at American Century Investments.

The new factor in the mix was involvement by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who held conversations with Obama this week and said he expected a new proposal from the president that he would consider.

Via: Newsmax

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