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The stock market rally of 2013 has been so merry that Goldman Sachs (GS) has boosted its forecast on where it's headed over the next two years. By quite a bit.

The Wall Street giant sees the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) rising to 1,750 by year-end, a 5% gain. In 2014, their forecast is for an additional 9% gain to 1,900, with 2015 producing a 10% gain to 2,100.

That works out to a 26% increase in the widely watched index from Monday's close. As important, Goldman Sachs sees dividends growing 11% in 2013 and 2014 and 9% in 2015.

Stocks were higher on Tuesday and appear to be headed for their 19th straight gain, the longest streak since 1968.  

By Abram Brown  

By Dana Blankenhorn

The present recovery is fueled by, well, fuel.

Fracking has uncovered huge pools of oil in Texas, Ohio and North Dakota, creating an economic boom in those places that has trickled down to the rest of the country.

A Texan may have no more incentive than an Arab to give you a better price on his oil, but he does spread the wealth around, as I saw on a recent trip to Kingsville for my daughter's graduation (TheStreet).

But every oil boom carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.

I have seen this movie before.

 

By Scott Rubin 

 

Gold prices gained more than 2.5% on Monday after a roller-coaster ride, snapping a seven-session slide that was the longest since the financial crisis. But Tuesday, gold (GLD) prices were down again.

In the video below, MSN Money's Anthony Mirhaydari explains why gold has fallen, what's next for the precious metal, and where to find the smart investments given gold's fading luster. 

By the staff at Kapitall.com

Fund managers always buy and sell stocks. But sometime, despite many of them having the same bearish sentiment on a stock, there's no apparent reason for the sentiment. So, within the industrial category, we looked for stocks that might not merit such a lack of confidence from fund managers. 

We further searched for data that suggest a more positive future, including evidence of undervaluation and positive returns on investment and assets.

Building the list 
We screened industrial goods stocks for bearish sentiment from institutional investors, with significant net institutional sales over the last quarter representing at least 5% of share float (MoneyShow.com). This indicates that institutional investors such as hedge fund and mutual fund managers expect these companies to underperform.

 

Information provided by Theflyonthewall.com

Tuesday's noteworthy upgrades include:

• American Tower (AMT) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Macquarie
• BlackRock (BLK) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Macquarie
• Cubist (CBST) upgraded to Hold from Sell at Cantor
• IntercontinentalExch​ange (ICE) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Macquarie
• T. Rowe Price (TROW) upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Bernstein

 

By Billy Fisher, Stock Traders Daily

Even with the first quarter earnings season getting ready to wind down, there are still a host of prominent companies left to announce their quarterly results. This week, a couple of big names in the tech sector and numerous retailers will be unveiling their earnings. Here is what to watch for in the coming days.

Rally time for HP

After the market close on Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) will weigh in with its fiscal second quarter earnings. Analysts are calling for a 17.3% decline in earnings per share coupled with an 8.5% slide in total revenue.

 

By Rocco Pendola

From the get-go, I strongly supported Marissa Mayer's tenure as Yahoo (YHOO) CEO. While I still believe in the legend of Mayer, I'm officially jumping off the bandwagon.

YHOO stock is up 70% since Mayer got the gig. If you have been long, get the hell out. Even if you miss a bit more upside, why be greedy?

It's not that I dislike Tumblr. It's a perfectly worthy fad among a whole slew of new entrants into the space, if we can call social microblogs a "space." It's just that a.) I do not see the sense in making the acquisition; b.) it makes me feel like Mayer has too few original ideas on how to rebuild Yahoo; and c.) everybody is on the bandwagon like a pack of blindfolded sheep.

 

By Kelley Wright, Investment Quality Trends

For the most part, our cash needs are met by a paycheck -- until you no longer have one. At that point you will need a pool of capital and a stream of income from that capital to meet your needs. That's why we invest -- to build capital and income to meet or augment current and/or future cash needs.

Our preferred strategy is through buying shares of very high-quality companies with long histories of dividend payments and dividend increases. Why? Because dividends represent the most basic and fundamental measure of return on investment.

Besides high quality and a long history of dividend payments and dividend increases, what is ultimately of most importance is that the shares be purchased when they offer good value.

 

If you really think Tumblr is worth $1.1 billion, then Facebook's (FB) stock is worth much more than it is selling for. That's because the goal of Yahoo (YHOO) is to monetize Tumblr on mobile and that's just what Facebook is doing with its products.

But that doesn't matter.

There was a fabulous discussion on Street Signs last week with Jon Steinberg, president of Buzzfeed, arguably the hottest site of its kind of the Web. Steinberg pointed out that Facebook rebutted almost every objection about its service -- from no longer hot, to not monetizing mobile, to not being an important platform -- and nobody cared. In fact, people continue to misstate the case of Facebook, point-blank twisting the facts as if it doesn't even matter.

 

By Tim Parker

The markets ended Monday's trading session barely in the red on the back of a weak dollar and gold that started the day sharply lower but then rebounded.

On Tuesday, traders will watch for signs of follow-thru of Monday's pullback.

Here's what happened overnight:

Morning news

• S&P 500 futures are down slightly to 1,661.75.

• The EUR/USD was unchanged at 1.2881.

• German 10-year government bond yields rose 1 basis point to 1.3%.

 

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy approved what is only the second permit to export liquefied natural gas from the United States.

The permit went to the Freeport LNG project in Texas, a joint project of Freeport LNG Investments, ZHA FLNG Purchaser, Dow Chemical subsidiary Texas LNG Holdings and Turbo LNG, a subsidiary of Japan’s Osaka Gas. The permit will allow Freeport to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet to gas a day. Subject to environmental review and final regulatory approval, Freeport plans to begin exports in 2017.

The permit went to Freeport, but I think the immediate profits will go to Chicago Bridge and Iron, the engineering company most likely to win the bulk of work on Freeport.

 

What to make of the violent trading in silver (-SI) on Monday. Silver opened higher late Sunday in electronic trading and then collapsed, finally finding a bottom at $20.25 an ounce.

Had that level held, the result would have been the lowest price since August 2010. The sell-off was so extreme that the CME Group, which operates the New York Mercantile Exchange where silver is traded, halted trading in the metal four times overnight.

But silver -- and gold (-GC) -- surged in late trading, settling at $22.58 an ounce, up 23 cents. Gold, which had fallen to as low as $1,336.30, settled at $1,384.10, up $19.40.

Both were surging in electronic trading late Monday -- a signal perhaps that the metals have bottomed after severe slumps this year.