NEW YORK–The US stock mar­kets marched back in­to record ter­ri­to­ry as in­vestors seized on the lat­est en­cour­ag­ing news about the econ­o­my. Yes­ter­day, it was a re­port on the health of small busi­ness­es.Small busi­ness own­ers were slight­ly more op­ti­mistic in April, ac­cord­ing to a sur­vey by the Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Busi­ness. That helped push the Rus­sell 2000, an in­dex of small-com­pa­ny stocks, up 1.3 per cent.

The Dow rose 123.57 points, or 0.8 per cent, to 15,215.25. The S&P 500 in­dex rose 16.57 points, or 1 per cent, to 1,650.34 Both are at all-time highs.The Nas­daq com­pos­ite in­dex rose 23.82 points, or 0.7 per cent, to 3,462.61.

The Rus­sell in­dex is 16.1 per cent high­er since the start of the year, and is up more than the Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex, which in­cludes larg­er, glob­al com­pa­nies. Small stocks are do­ing well part­ly be­cause they are more fo­cused on the U.S., which is re­cov­er­ing, and don't get as much rev­enue from re­ces­sion-plagued Eu­rope as larg­er com­pa­nies do.

The ad­vance in small-com­pa­ny stocks is an­oth­er sign of how op­ti­mistic in­vestors have be­come. Small­er stocks are more risky than large ones, but al­so of­fer in­vestors the prospect of greater re­turns.

An­oth­er close­ly watched stock mar­ket in­di­ca­tor has al­so been on a tear: trans­porta­tion stocks. The Dow Trans­port av­er­age rose 1.9 per cent Tues­day and is up 21.8 per cent this year, far more than oth­er ma­jor in­dex­es. In­vestors of­ten see these stocks as an in­di­ca­tion of where the econ­o­my is go­ing. When com­pa­nies make and ship more goods, the think­ing goes, truck­ers, air­lines and rail­ways have more busi­ness.The prospect of con­tin­ued stim­u­lus from the Fed­er­al Re­serve has al­so sup­port­ed the mar­ket's run-up.

The US econ­o­my grew 2.5 per cent in the first quar­ter. While hir­ing has picked up, the un­em­ploy­ment rate is still at 7.5 per cent, above the 6.5 per cent rate that the Fed­er­al Re­serve is tar­get­ing. As a re­sult the cen­tral bank is ex­pect­ed to keep buy­ing bonds to hold down long-term in­ter­est rates and en­cour­age more bor­row­ing and spend­ing.

Earn­ings of com­pa­nies in the S&P 500 in­dex, mean­while, are ex­pect­ed to rise 5 per cent in the first quar­ter, and grow even faster in the sec­ond half of the year, ac­cord­ing to S&P Cap­i­tal IQ.The mar­ket rose from the open­ing of trad­ing and climbed steadi­ly through­out the day.

It got sup­port af­ter hedge fund man­ag­er David Tep­per said that he is still bull­ish on stocks. Speak­ing on CN­BC, Tep­per said that in­vestors shouldn't wor­ry about the Fed ta­per­ing its stim­u­lus pro­gram. The mon­ey man­ag­er has about $18 bil­lion un­der man­age­ment, ac­cord­ing to the broad­cast­er.All ten in­dus­try groups in the S&P 500 in­dex rose, led by a 1.7 per cent in­crease in banks and in­sur­ers. Fi­nan­cial stocks are up the most in the past month, 6.1 per cent.

AP