Stocks, Stock Market | featured news

A big gain in the job market is lifting the stock market to new milestones. The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 15,000 for the first time early Friday, and the Standard and Poor's 500 index, a broader market measure, broke through 1,600 for the first time.

As the search volume on generic terms such as "debt", "portfolio" and "stocks" fell, the Dow Jones average tended to go up - and vice versa. An investment strategy based on these search volume data between 2004 and 2011 would have made a profit of 326%.

For a few surreal minutes, a mere 12 words on Twitter caused the world's mightiest stock market to tremble. No sooner did hackers send a false Associated Press tweet reporting explosions at the White House on Tuesday than investors started dumping stocks - eventually unloading $134 billion worth. Turns out, some investors are not only gullible, they're impossibly fast stock traders.

Gold prices pushed higher as investors bet that demand for the metal in coins and bars would continue at a high rate following this month's plunge in prices.

A rare earnings miss for IBM tugged the Dow Jones industrial average lower on Friday, while the rest of the market headed toward slight gains after a turbulent week. Quarterly earnings for the country's largest provider of computer services fell short of forecasts for the first time since 2005.Read more on NewsOK.com

As I write this post on April 15, spot gold prices, according to Bloomberg, settled down approximately 9% for the day (which marks the biggest one day decline since February of 1983), while spot silver prices were down approximately 12% for the day.

Trading in the stock market turned more treacherous in late-day trading as investors reacted to slowing economic growth in China and a massive commodity sell-off -- and as initial word spread as well of the explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 266 points on the day, down 1.8%. It was the Dow's biggest point drop since Nov. 7, in the wake of President Obama's reelection, when the index lost 295 points.

Gold headed for its biggest two-day drop in 30 years on Monday as funds accelerated their exits from the market, and investors also cut exposure to oil, copper and grain after underwhelming Chinese growth data.

The Federal Reserve says it may start dialing back asset purchases this summer, but Wall Street doesn't seem worried Wednesday with stocks flying Wednesday and driving the major averages to fresh nominal highs.

New York's Dow Jones share index sets a new all-time high, as does the broader based S&P 500 index. The rallies mean the stock markets are returning to levels not seen since before the global financial crisis.