Is good news no longer bad news for markets?

NEW YORK — For the longest time, good incoming news was viewed as bad news by Wall Street. The reason: Stock investors figured signs of a healing economy would move the Federal Reserve ever closer to dialing back its market-friendly stimulus program.

But that might be finally changing. Need proof? On Friday, the economy created a better-than-expected 203,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to a five-year low of 7%, a threshold the Fed once said would mark the end of its bond-buying program.

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But the stock market went up — not down as it did in the spring and summer when the Fed first hinted at "tapering" its asset purchases. The S&P 500 followed with a

record closing high of 1808.37

Monday.

Some on Wall Street theorize that the jobs report, despite the impressive headline numbers, was neither too strong nor too weak. In essence, it's not a major game-changer as it relates to the timing of the Fed's move toward less-easy monetary policy.

But there was a contingent of Wall Street pros who viewed the market reaction as a sign that good economic news may now be viewed as good news for stocks.

"Good economic news is no longer necessarily bad short-term news for financial markets," says Jerry Webman, chief economist for Oppenheimer Funds. "Instead, a consensus seems to be building that a Fed taper decision will be, on balance, positive — as long as the economy is improving unambiguously."