Markets Are Brushing Off Bad News And Rallying

The Dow is up 54 points (0.3%%).

The S&P 500 is up 4 points (0.2%).

The Nasdaq is flat.

Interestingly, this comes in the wake of what most would consider bad news.

We just learned industrial production unexpectedly fell 0.3% in January, which was much worse than the 0.2% gain expected. Manufacturing production fell 0.8% in what was the worst drop since 2009.

"All the damage was in the manufacturing sector," noted Pantheon Macroeconomics' Ian Shepherdson. "The cold weather drove up utility output by 4.1%, thanks to increased demand for heating energy. This matters because the implied jump in energy consumption will feed into real consumers' spending."

Today's gains come on top of Thursday's gains, which came despite weaker-than-expected retail sales data.