New York City welcomes Easter with plenty of sunshine and springlike temperatures. A lot people are on the streets enjoying the weather and the extra holidays. Many countries in the Western world celebrate Easter in some way or another. In Germany for examples most people have 4 days off, including Good Friday (called "Karfreitag", a Catholic term) and Easter Monday.
Easter also stands for the begin of spring. The German literature has a lot of Easter poems which are referring to the seasonal issue. The most popular German Easter riddle is "Der Osterspaziergang" (the Easter walk
ostern) from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It starts with the line "Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Bäche" ("freed from the ice are rivers and creeks").
It looks like the stock market also celebrates this event. It is a nice coincidence that the last trading day in the Easter week (and of the first quarter) finished with an all-time high for the S&P 500. The gauge for the U.S. stock market gained 10% in the first quarter.
This is is a response to the fact that the U.S. economy is getting better. Last week we learned the in the U.S. consumer spending, personal income, manufacturing & home sales are expanding and that house prices are climbing again.
It seems that state of the U.S. economy is perfectly described by Goethe´s poem. The economic numbers show that the U.S. economy is far away from the recession that has frozen the country 4 years ago. And the stock market is free for new highs.
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