RJ and Makay

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This year’s first-quarter stock market performance was the best in many years. The Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 index rose 12% from the end of Q4 2011, and the Dow Jones industrial average surged 8.14%, the largest gains since Q1 1998. The Nasdaq showed the largest gain with an increase of 19%, its strongest first-quarter gain since 1991. The increases replenished almost $1.85 trillion into the market since January.

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More than half of young people age 18 to 24 are willing to try new high-tech payment tools, according to a new American Express survey.  These new “contactless payment” methods are smoothing a path for smartphones to eventually replace wallets.  The study identified three distinct types, the techie, the security buff, and the budget boss, in its survey of attitudes regarding mobile payment methods.

Maybe consumers learned something from the recession after all? According to the top six credit card issuers, customers are getting better about paying their bills.

On Tuesday, Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, American Express, Capital One, and Discover all completed regulatory filings detailing credit card delinquencies from January to February. In a trend that began a year ago, three of the companies reported that delinquencies fell in February.