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The Dow's epic winning streak has now gone on for 10 days.
First the scoreboard:
Dow: 14,538, +83.8 pts, +0.5 percent

S&P 500: 1,563, +8.7 pts, +0.5 percent

NASDAQ: 3,257, +13.8 pts, +0.4 percent

And now the top stories:
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gone on 10-day win streaks only 11 times since World War II.  The last time it accomplished this before today was 16 years ago.  Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is just two points an all-time high.

  • The good news about the U.S. economy continues to roll out.  This morning we learned that initial weekly jobless claims unexpectedly fell to 332k from 342k a week ago.  This brought the four-week moving average down to its lowest level since March 2008.

  • The reporting period for the current jobless claims data was for the week ending March 9.  This means it was the first full week since the sequester kicked in.  And that wasn't the only thing preventing claims from falling further.  "Seasonal adjustment factors were actually unsupportive for claims this week, so their outperformance here could be seen as evidence that the layoff side of the equation continues to improve quite notably," said TD Securities' Gennadiy Goldberg.

  • UBS's Art Cashin and BTIG's Dan Greenhaus poured some cold water on everyone's enthusiasm by saying that there was nothing special about the current stock market rally.  "But at this point in 2012?" asked Greenhaus rhetorically.  "The S&P 500 was higher by 11% and as of 46 days into the year, 2013 is exactly where 2012 was. So while ebullience is spreading like wildfire, justified to some degree, there isn’t anything special about this rally, at least that we didn’t see just one year ago."