Natural gas added 4 cents to $3.10 per 1,000 cubic feet, wholesale gasoline rose
2 cents to $1.64 per gallon and heating oil gained a penny to $1.52 per gallon.
Traders also got some encouragement from the latest Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index, which showed
that U. S. home prices rose at the fastest pace in more than two years in January.
Investor optimism that Congress and the White House are pivoting to tax cuts
and other business-friendly policy proposals after spending recent weeks focused on health care also helped send the market higher, said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade.
But the market livened up around midmorning when the Conference Board said its consumer
confidence index rose this month to its highest level in more than 16 years.
Benchmark U. S. crude rose 64 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at $48.37 per barrel in New York.
Banks and other financial companies led U. S. stock indexes sharply higher Tuesday,
snapping an eight-day losing streak for the Dow Jones industrial average.
Nadia Lovell said that The market is sort of in a holding pattern waiting for additional clarity from the administration on corporate tax reform,
The market got a boost from new data showing that consumer confidence in the U. S. hit its highest level since 2000.