U.S. stocks were expected to start Tuesday with gains, continuing the recent trek upward, with reports on real estate and consumer confidence on tap.

Dow Jones industrial average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq 100 futures are higher.

Futures measure current index values against perceived future performance and offer an indication of how markets may open when trading begins.

Stocks finished higher Monday, pushing the Dow to its highest level in 18 months, after a report from the Commerce Department showed that consumer spending rose 0.3% in February.

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The strengthening U.S. economy, subdued inflation and rising stock prices are propelling the dollar rally into its fifth month as traders seek refuge from Europe’s fiscal crisis and Japanese deflation, Bloomberg reports.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. ended bets on a falling dollar last week after the trades lost 2.8 percent. Strategists are raising greenback forecasts at the fastest pace since last March, just before U.S. stimulus efforts that poured as much as $12.8 trillion into the economy ended the currency’s strongest rally in 28 years. Median predictions for the dollar against 47 currencies tracked in Bloomberg surveys rose an average of 1.4 percentage points in the month to March 24.

A year after correctly predicting the currency’s decline and likening it to the fall of Rome, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s Alan Ruskin said it may soar 22 percent to $1.10 per euro if Greece defaults.

“We’ve moved away from the worst fears,” said Ruskin, the head of currency strategy for RBS Capital Markets in Stamford, Connecticut. “In the U.S., the economy picked itself up off the ground,” he said in an interview. “Compared to what it might have looked like from the view of March 2009, March 2010 looks very good.”

“We have clearly underestimated the impact on the euro from the European sovereign crisis,” Goldman analysts led by Thomas Stolper in London said in a March 25 e-mail. “Building consensus among euro-zone members is becoming increasingly difficult,” they wrote, explaining Goldman’s decision to exit the bullish euro bet it made two weeks earlier. “These political headwinds currently matter far more for the euro than the cyclical factors.”

Citigroup cut its losses on a similar trade after deciding its timing had been “inopportune,” strategists Todd Elmer in New York and Michael Hart in London wrote in a March 25 note.

Sentiment toward the dollar is shifting on optimism the currency’s best run since 2008 will be invigorated as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke stops printing money and raises borrowing costs amid predictions the U.S. economy will grow twice as fast as Europe’s and Japan’s.

The dollar gained against all 15 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg last week except the Mexican peso, rising 1.1 percent to $1.3410 per euro, 0.8 percent to $1.4898 per pound and 2.2 percent to 92.52 yen. The Intercontinental Exchange Inc. Dollar Index is up 1.2 percent in March after gaining in each of the past three months.

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U.S. stocks are poised to open higher Friday after European leaders agreed on an aid package for Greece and as investors awaited the final revised figure for 4th quarter economic growth.

Stocks gave up gains Thursday, ending little changed, as a late-session bounce in the dollar sapped the strength out of a rally that had pushed all three major indexes near new 18-month highs.

So far this week, the Dow and Nasdaq are up about 1%, and the S&P 500 is slightly higher.

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Dubai’s government said on Thursday it would support the restructuring of debt-laden state-owned firms Dubai World and Nakheel by providing $9.5 billion in new funding.

The markets are accepting this piece of news very well indeed, with DJIA up 0.60% twenty minutes after the opening bell.

Dubai’s request for debt payment delays in November shook global markets and raised wider concerns among international investors about transparency and disclosure standards in the region.

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