Rally monkey peeks out of his box, wonders if it's safe to come out After last week's wobbles and the long holiday kept him boxed, the rally monkey is taking a cautious look around - at pixel time the S&P 500 was up 1.17 per cent, while the FTSE 100 finished up 1.8 per cent and Nikkei futures were up as much as 2 per cent earlier on Tuesday. It's always foolish impossible difficult to pinpoint a specific cause, but!... It's been a good day in US economic data. The Case-Schiller 20-city index indicated that home prices climbed by 10.9 per cent in the year to March, the Conference Board's consumer confidence index for May was the highest monthly reading in more than five years, and Moody's has taken the US banking system off the negative outlook it's had since 2008, because it sees better prospects for the US economy. Two charts, the first from Calculated Risk and the second via Capital Economics, do the dirty work: