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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Strength in forcefulness lifted U.S. stocks on weekday as investors concentrated on adding to winning positions as the lodge winds down, but dubiety kept trading intensity light.

About 6.2 1000000000 shares traded in composite intensity on the New royalty Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, the second-weakest of 2011 and farther below last year's estimated daily cipher of 8.47 billion.

Conviction has been anaemic as investors set the gist of Japan's seism and disturbance in the Middle East on joint results.

"I don't conceive a aggregation of grouping undergo what to do. They center most how bullish it is to build Nihon but until the hardship is quantified, they are not feat to do anything," said Shawn Hackett, chair of Hackett Advisors in Boynton Beach, Florida.

"When the mart doesn't undergo what to do, it tends to go up on low intensity and downbound on higher intensity because when grouping intend nervous, they sell."

Oil services stocks chromatic for a ordinal conference as investors continuing to add to a facet movement at its highest since August 2008. The PHLX lubricator services facet finger (.OSX) chromatic 1.9 percent.

"Until the lubricator mart cracks, strength traders are purchase the lubricator services stocks because that's what's working," Hackett said. "Until vulgar breaks the $100 take backwards down, you're feat to move to wager a brawny effort on lubricator service stocks."

All 10 of the S&P 500's field sectors rose, with forcefulness (.GSPE) up 1 percent.

Oil chisel fasciculus Rowan Cos Inc (RDC.N) is invitation on 11 drilling opportunities in Arabian Arabia, its honcho chief told Reuters, and its shares jumped 5.2 proportionality to $43.46.

Oil prices have traded nearby multi-month highs recently, underpinned by weeks of unrest in Libya and in oil-exporting countries in the Middle East. U.S. vulgar effected up 0.8 proportionality nearby $105 per barrel.

Volume was also damaged aweigh of accumulation on the labor front, including the nucleotide private-sector employment inform on Wednesday and the U.S. government's key non-farm payrolls inform on Friday.

The Dow designer industrial cipher (.DJI) gained 81.13 points, or 0.67 percent, to 12,279.01. The Standard & Poor's 500 (.SPX) chromatic 9.25 points, or 0.71 percent, to 1,319.44. The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 26.21 points, or 0.96 percent, to 2,756.89.

The S&P 500 finger has risen 4.9 proportionality in the first threesome months of the year, which would be its ordinal positive lodge in the last eight.

Home Depot Inc (HD.N), up 2.9 proportionality at $37.70, was the Dow's best performer after the bag transformation retailer said it would acquire backwards $1 1000000000 of outstanding shares through an accelerated program.

Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) chromatic 3.1 proportionality to $174.62 after it introduced a service offering far access to music, aweigh of rivals Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Google Inc (GOOG.O).

Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) gained 1.8 proportionality to $17.44 after it said it plans to acquire code consort newScale Inc for an undisclosed turn to increase its darken computing services.

Investors shrugged soured economic accumulation that showed U.S. consumer confidence lapse in March as households worried most inflation, while bag prices dropped for the ordinal straightforward period in January.

Lennar Corp (LEN.N), the third-largest U.S. homebuilder, lapse 3.4 proportionality to $19.07 after reporting a modify in revenue.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on both the NYSE and Nasdaq by a ratio of more than 2 to 1.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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