Stocks continue their upward climb. As TradeMaster's Jason Cimpl  told us earlier in the week, the S&P 500 has kept its date with 1,150. And it looks poised to move higher.   

The retail sales data from February is positive. Despite two crippling blizzards on the East Coast, sales still rose 0.3%. And if you strip out autos, sales were up 0.8%.   

Normally, it makes no sense to ignore auto sales because they are obviously an important gauge of consumer spending, but in light of the recalls from Toyota (NYSE:TM), it’s reasonable to assume that some auto sales were simply postponed due to the uncertainty.    

Sales were especially strong for electronics and at restaurants and bars. Sounds like consumers are celebrating their new iPhone purchase over a beer. That’s probably led to a surge in drunk-texting.   

Retail sales from January have now been revised lower two times, from an initial reading of +0.5% to the current +0.1%. Funny thing about this rally – economic data is consistently revised lower, and no one cares. The only exception I can think of is 4Q 2009 GDP, which was actually revised slightly higher.  

Economic data has been improving. But it says more about the bullishness of investors that they are consistently overlooking negative data. That gives me more confidence that we will be seeing new highs for the major indices soon.   

Now, let’s wrap up our week with some Reader Mail…