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Last year, investors were so worried about a financial disaster in Europe that U.S. companies with strong earnings have been undervalued, said Tim Courtney, chief investment officer of Burns Advisory Group in Oklahoma City. Now, he said, stock prices are catching up. The S&P is up 5.4 percent this year, the Dow 4 percent. "Right now the market is going up just on the absence of bad news, on the absence of that worst-case scenario materializing," he said. Stocks in Europe closed nearly flat or up slightly. Britain's FTSE 100 index rose 0.1 percent. Germany's DAX was 0.6 percent higher, and the CAC-40 in France rose 0.3 percent. The euro was also subdued after recent gains, trading slightly lower at $1.315. In other corporate news: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc., which makes Keurig cup coffee brewers, rose a hot 24 percent after it said first-quarter revenue more than doubled, margins tripled, and net income rose more than 40-fold. MasterCard rose 6.7 percent after adjusted profits beat Wall Street expectations. Starwood Hotels & Resorts World Inc., which operates Sheraton and Westin hotels, fell 1.6 percent after it said its fourth-quarter profit dropped 51 percent because it set aside money for an unfavorable legal decision. Natural gas prices climbed more than 7 percent after the government said the nation's supplies shrank last week. Natural gas hit a 10-year low last month. Benchmark crude oil fell $1.25 to end at $96.36 per barrel in New York because of weak demand.
[Associated
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