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Wall Street prepares to coast to end of 2009

The stock market enters the final week of trading at its highs for the year on the heels of a stunning nine-month rally that lifted the main indexes from their lowest levels in over a decade.

The final four trading days of the year in the upcoming holiday-shortened week are expected to see light activity and a favorable mood, with the market enjoying a so-called Santa Claus rally.

In the holiday week ending Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.85 percent to 10,520.10, its best level in nearly 15 months.

The tech-rich Nasdaq composite meanwhile rallied 3.35 percent to 2285.69 and the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 index advanced 2.18 percent to 1,126.48.

Fred Dickson, market strategist at DA Davidson & Co., said the mood on Wall Street should remain positive through the coming week.

“Trading activity should pick up next week as investors make last minute portfolio changes like tax-loss sales and portfolio rebalancing,” he said.

“We still expect to see the minor Santa Claus rally continue through New Year’s Eve.”

Some said the upbeat mood was helped by a steepening of the yield curve — or a rise in the difference between short-term and long-term bond rates. Analysts say this is a positive sign because it encourages lending and risk taking.

The opposite phenomenon, an inverted yield curve, suggested recession was coming in 2007.

The yield curve is “a good barometer of the health of the US economy,” said Chris Gaffney at EverBank World Markets, who noted that the difference between the short and long bonds rose to a record high in the past week.

With the year almost over, the Dow blue-chip index is sitting on 2009 gains of 19.87 percent, with the Nasdaq up 44.94 percent and S&P index ahead by 24.71 percent.

Although the market remains well below highs hit in 2007 and is stuck near levels from a decade ago, many traders are satisfied with a positive year.

“The year now ending will be remembered more for what didn’t happen, than what did,” said Peter Buchanan, economist at CIBC World Markets.

Buchanan said the year opened “with talk of financial and economic Armageddon,” but that a recovery came with surprising speed.

“Few developments have been more striking than the turnaround in equity markets,” he said.

Many analysts say that following the stomach-turning ups and downs over the past months, the stock market may be fairly valued, leaving the possibility of an extension of gains into 2010.

“We have made a lot of progress during 2009 and we have a lot more to make,” said John Wilson, equity strategist at Morgan Keegan.

“This has been a difficult decade for investors. If history is any example, the next decade should provide a more favorable environment.”

Bonds fell amid a shift to equities in the past week. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond increased to 3.807 percent from 3.546 percent a week earlier while that on the 30-year bond rose to 4.687 percent from 4.458 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.