Tag - Sfnc

Olympic Steel, Inc. (Nasdaq:ZEUS), Simmons First National Corp. (Nasdaq:SFNC) and Actel Corp. (Nasdaq:ACTL) were among the new 52-week highs established during Wednesday's trading among companies with market capitalizations or values under $750 million.

NCI, INC. (Nasdaq:NCIT), Ebix, Inc. (Nasdaq:EBIX) and Waste Industries USA, Inc. (Nasdaq:WWIN) were also among the 52-week small-cap highs.

Here are Wednesday's 52-week small-cap highs:

The Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) is maintaining strong gains on news of lower-than-expected March inflation earnings from major banks. At 2:19 p.m. ET, the small-cap index had added 14.99 points, or 2.17%, to 707.05. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 163.74 points, or 1.32%, to 12,526.21.

Stocks small and large are rallying on news before the opening that consumer prices rose 0.3% in March, below the projected 0.4%. The same report by the U.S. Labor Department also showed that core prices, which exclude the costs of food and energy, added 0.2%, as expected.

“Typically, when the economy goes into recession we see inflationary pressures ease, but there is a significant lag,” said Arun Raha, vice president of economic research and consulting for the North American operations of reinsurance company Swiss Re, in an email. “Today’s CPI numbers reinforce that trend. Inflationary pressures . . .