A pos­i­tive re­port on US man­u­fac­tur­ing over­shad­owed con­cerns about weak­er glob­al growth and lift­ed stocks to mul­ti-year highs yes­ter­day. The gain added to the best first quar­ter for stocks in more than a decade. The In­sti­tute for Sup­ply Man­age­ment said that its in­dex of man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty rose strong­ly this month. A mea­sure of man­u­fac­tur­ing em­ploy­ment rose to a nine-month high. Stocks in the US and Eu­rope had tilt­ed neg­a­tive but rose af­ter the ISM re­port. The S&P 500 closed up 10.57 points, or 0.8 per cent, at 1,419.04. That was its high­est close since May 19, 2008. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age added 52.45 points, or 0.4 per cent, to close at 13,264.49. It hasn't closed that high since the last day of 2007. The Nas­daq com­pos­ite av­er­age gained 28.13, or 0.9 per cent, to 3,119.70.

From Jan­u­ary through March, the Dow rose eight per cent and the S&P 12 per cent, the best first quar­ter for those in­dex­es since 1998. The Nas­daq rose 19 per cent, its best first quar­ter since 1991. Groupon plunged 17 per cent on the first trad­ing day af­ter the com­pa­ny said its in­ter­nal con­trols are weak and its fourth-quar­ter loss was big­ger than ini­tial­ly re­port­ed. Still, the ral­ly was broad, lift­ing all ten of the S&P 500's in­dus­try groups. Ris­ing com­mod­i­ty prices gave ma­te­ri­als and en­er­gy com­pa­nies some of the strongest gains. A weak­er re­port on US con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty kept traders' en­thu­si­asm in check. Builders slowed their ac­tiv­i­ty for a sec­ond straight month in Feb­ru­ary, push­ing con­struc­tion spend­ing down by the largest amount in sev­en months.

The con­flict­ing US eco­nom­ic re­ports fol­lowed mixed da­ta from over­seas. Sur­veys of Chi­nese fac­to­ry ex­ec­u­tives shad­ed an un­even pic­ture: A gov­ern­ment-sanc­tioned re­port said that man­u­fac­tur­ing there gained mo­men­tum for a fourth straight month. But a sep­a­rate sur­vey by mega­bank HS­BC sug­gest­ed that Chi­na's ex­port ac­tiv­i­ty is con­tract­ing. The HS­BC sur­vey record­ed its low­est av­er­age read­ing in three years in the first quar­ter. Lat­er, a sur­vey of Eu­ro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ing ex­ec­u­tives by fi­nan­cial da­ta firm Mark­it fell to a three-month low. The re­sult in­di­cat­ed that man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty there is con­tract­ing. Eu­rope's sta­tis­tics bu­reau said that the ner­vous tone boost­ed de­mand for ul­tra-safe Trea­surys, send­ing the yield on the ten-year Trea­sury note down to 2.19 per cent from 2.24 per cent ear­li­er yes­ter­day.

Trad­ing on the New York Stock Ex­change was lighter than av­er­age. Many traders looked ahead to the US March jobs re­port, due out Fri­day. Econ­o­mists ex­pect that job cre­ation slowed mod­est­ly af­ter three of the strongest months for the labour mar­ket since the re­ces­sion. Eu­ro­pean mar­kets soared in their fi­nal 90 min­utes of trad­ing af­ter the US fac­to­ry re­port was re­leased. France's CAC 40 rose 1.1 per cent, Lon­don's FTSE 100 gained 1.8 per cent, and Ger­many's DAX added 1.6 per cent.

(AP)