Wall Street: Back to the Blue Chips

Wall Street hates a mystery — uncertainty is bad for the market — but it has harbored a mystery of its own for the past few weeks. While the U.S. economy enjoyed its fastest-rising first quarter in peacetime history, while hundreds of stocks surged ahead, while the bulls clearly outnumbered the bears on the Street, the Dow-Jones average of 30 industrial blue chips barely moved after it hit a record of 906 in early February. Last week, in a series of stirring sessions, the blue chips finally took off. Led by General Motors, A.T. &...