Investors Find A Reason To Buy

After a spell of tumultuous and downbeat trading days, the three big indexes closed up Tuesday.

A better-than-expected consumer-confidence index as well as a good earnings report from Verizon seemed to soothe recent investor terrorism jitters.

Telecom company Verizon reported a second-quarter profit of $1.8 billion on revenue of $17.8 billion--that's up 6% from the same period a year ago, when the company reported $16.8 billion in revenue.

Private research group the Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer-confidence index in the economy rose to 106.1 this month. That's up from 102.8 in June and is the highest it's been in more than two years.

"I think the numbers we've seen recently show that the upturn in employment is substantial and sustainable," Gary R. Thayer, chief economist at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc., told the Associated Press.

The Dow rose 123.22 points, or 1.2%, to close at 10,085.14. The S&P 500 rose 1%, or 1.76 points, to 1,094.83. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.6%, or 30.08 points, to 1,869.1; and our InformationWeek 100 rose 1.6%, or 4.3 points, to rest at 281.72.

The Nasdaq-100 tracking stock rose in moderate trading. It was up 1.4%, or 47 cents, at $34.53, on volume of 103 million shares.

See the full listing of all the companies in the InformationWeek 100 and the top 5 percentage winners and losers for the last closing at informationweek.com/stocks.