Investors hope that a bullish report could lift the market out of its April slump.
They were accused of issuing overly bullish reports to generate investment banking business.
Mr. Spitzer has contended that Merrill misled its investor clients by issuing exceedingly bullish reports to benefit its corporate customers.
In the sugar market, traders ignored the bullish reports of new purchases by China and sugar fell to its lowest level in about a month.
The dollar drifted lower against most major currencies, as the traders ignored bullish economic reports that normally would have provided a lift.
USA Today leads with a bullish report on retail sales over the Thanksgiving weekend.
How does Princeton Financial, which issued the bullish report that ignored the company's own cautions, feel about what has happened?
But since the Iraqi invasion last August, Japanese have been hearing cautious but bullish reports from their economic mandarins about the prospects for weathering the storm.
Several weeks of bullish economic reports raised expectations that hiring, at long last, would break out of the doldrums.
Today's bullish economic reports came as the Federal Reserve Board began a two-day meeting to set strategy for the year on interest rates and the money supply.