U.S. CONSUMERS BUOY TUESDAY'S MARKETS

Confident consumers in the U. S. made for positive market momentum on Tuesday, giving Canada’s benchmark stock index its first positive close in three sessions.

The S P/ TS composite index finished at 12,740.47, up 40.0 points, or 0.32%. Five of the 10 sub- indexes advanced, led by materials, up 1.28% as the price of gold rose, boosting producers of the precious metal.

Industrials led decliners, falling 1. 2% largely due to a 20.55% in the share price of SNC- Lavalin, which fell to $ 38.43 after the Montreal engineering giant warned that its stalled pro ects in Libya will take an $ 80- million bite out of its earnings for the year, about 18%.

The price of crude oil slipped US$ 2.01 to US$ 106.55 a barrel, while gold gained US$ 14.80 to US$ 1,788.40 an ounce.

U. S. consumer confidence levels shot up in February to 70.8 from 61.1 in anuary, according to the Conference Board, blowing away expectations for a rise to 63.0.

“It’s giving people a little bit of confidence that the economy will gradually improve and the recent run over the past four months in the stock market was not a fake out,” Irwin Michael, a money manager at ABC Funds in Toronto, told Bloomberg. “With good earnings, more mergers and acquisitions because we see a lot of that happening we expect the market to be higher than where it is now at the end of the year.”

The confidence numbers managed to overshadow durable goods orders for anuary, which declined 4%, when analysts had expected a drop of 1%. Also on Tuesday, the Case/ Shiller housing price index also showed a disappointing 1.1% drop.

The Dow ones industrial average closed above 13,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May 2008, rising 23.61 points, or 0.18%, to 13,005.12. The Nasdaq composite index rose 20.60 points, or 0.6 % , to 2, 86.76.

“Amid all the recent attention on the Dow’s quest for the 13,000 level, an equally noteworthy fact is how incredibly stable the index has been recently. So far this year, only two sessions have seen moves in excess of 1% ( an. 3 was 1.5% in the first session of the year and Feb. 3 was 1.2% after the obs report),” notes BMO Capital Markets deputy chief economist Douglas Porter. “In recent days, it has barely moved, recording two days in a row of less than two- point moves. This contrasts heavily with last summer and fall, when daily changes of 2% to 4% were the norm. And we won’t con ure up memories of late 2008, when daily swings of more than 6% were not uncommon.”

The Canadian dollar umped 38 basis points to US$ 1.0046.

Canada’s unior Venture exchange advanced 13.6 points, or 0.82%, to 1,6 3.1 .