Around the markets: The Treasury seeks advice; less than meets the eye in the market rally; and Wal-Mart’s bull run

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Some late-night (or early-morning) reading from around the markets:

-- ‘We’re not serious, but if we were . . .’: The Treasury Department keeps telling us that it has no plans to pump taxpayers’ dollars into struggling mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though it persuaded Congress to give it that authority in last month’s massive housing-rescue bill. But just in case, Uncle Sam said Tuesday it hired brokerage Morgan Stanley to provide advice on how to use the powers granted by the bill. See the full story here. Morgan said it wouldn’t charge the Treasury a fee for this work, just expenses of $95,000.

-- Yes, the stock market is rallying, but you haven’t missed all that much so far: Thanks to another drop in oil prices and a steady Fed, the Dow Jones industrial average scored a 331-point, 2.9% gain on Tuesday, to 11,615.77. It was the biggest one-day advance since April 1. Impressive? Sure -- except that the rally just returned the Dow to within a few points of where it was on July 23. That’s a reminder of how volatile the market’s swings have been in recent weeks.

From its two-year low of 10,962.54 on July 15, the Dow now is up 6%. Broader market indexes have fared about the same. The Standard & Poor’s 500, up 2.9% on Tuesday, is up 5.8% from its low July 15. In part, heavy losses in commodity-related stocks are offsetting gains elsewhere in the market.

-- Not the low-price leader by one important measure: Shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. closed above $60 on Tuesday for the first time since the spring of 2004. The stock rose $1.91, or 3.3%, to $60.34 -- boosting its year-to-date gain to 27% (while the S&P 500 is down 12.5%). Remember the corollary that ‘what’s good for General Motors is good for America’? This year, what’s bad for America (record energy prices and shrinking employment) is good for Wal-Mart, as suddenly frugal consumers rediscover the retailer’s low price tags. And apparently, the market doesn’t care about the tiff involving Wal-Mart’s alleged views on a Barack Obama administration.