Stocks opened higher Tuesday after strong earnings reports from Johnson & Johnson, Zions Bancorporation and other companies. Housing starts increased more than expected in March.

Zions rose 6 percent, the most of any company in the Standard & Poor's 500 index. The Utah bank reported a first-quarter profit after posting a loss a year ago. It also said customers were getting better at paying back loans, allowing the bank to set aside less money to cover defaults.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 41 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,242. The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 4 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,309. The Nasdaq composite rose 5, or 0.2 percent, to 2,740.

Health care heavyweight Johnson & Johnson rose 3 percent. The company beat Wall Street's earnings expectations and raised its full-year earnings forecast.

The Commerce Department reported that builders broke ground in March on the highest number of new homes in six months. Home construction rose 7.2 percent from February, more than analysts had expected.

Trucking company Paccar Inc. rose 5 percent after its income and revenues beat analysts' expectations.

The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments from Microsoft Corp. asking it to overturn a $290 million patent infringement judgment against the world's largest software maker, a ruling that could have a profound effect on how corporations protect and profit from their future inventions.

An eight-justice court on Monday heard arguments from the Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, which wants the multimillion dollar judgment against it erased because it claims a judge used the wrong standard.

Business groups are closely watching this case. The U.S. government made more than $64 billion off of international licensing and royalties from patents in 2009, with an expected growth rate of 15 percent a year. A ruling for Microsoft could make companies less likely to invest in new inventions, but a ruling for i4i, the company which brought the lawsuit against Microsoft, could make it harder for large corporations to fight off such challenges.

Goldman Sachs' first-quarter income fell 72 percent after the bank paid $1.64 billion in dividends to redeem preferred shares it issued to billionaire investor Warren Buffett during the financial crisis.

The New York investment bank said Tuesday that it earned $908 million, or $1.56 per share, compared with $3.3 billion, or $5.59 a share in the first quarter of last year.

Excluding the dividend payment, earnings per common share were $4.38, beating the $3.95 per share forecast of analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Revenue fell 7 percent to $11.9 billion on weakness in the bank's core businesses of trading stocks and bonds and advising clients. Goldman's stock fell 0.9 percent to $152.38 in late morning trading.

The Federal Reserve gave Goldman Sachs Group Inc. permission to repay Berkshire Hathaway last month. While the Fed's decision wasn't a surprise given Goldman's ever-widening profits since the financial crisis, it reflected how far Goldman and other major banks have progressed from the darkest days of September 2008.

At that time, Buffett, who is CEO of Berkshire, helped shore up confidence in Goldman Sachs by making a $5 billion investment in the company. Berkshire received preferred shares that paid a 10 percent annual dividend. Goldman's second-quarter earnings will likely be affected by the redemption, which occurred on April 18.

Shares in British luxury goods company Burberry Group PLC jumped Tuesday after the company reported strong second-half sales and predicted a full-year profit at the top end of market forecasts.

Burberry's popularity in the Asia Pacific region, particularly Hong Kong and Taiwan, led sales 33 percent higher in the six months to March 31, compared to a year earlier.

Chief Executive Angela Ahrendts said the company expects full-year pretax profit to be at the top end of market forecasts, or around 347 million pounds ($564 million).

"While the luxury industry faces global challenges in the year ahead, we remain confident in our team's ability to outperform, underpinned by the consistent execution of our key strategies," said Ahrendts in a trading update.

Retail revenues were 42 percent higher at 596 million pounds ($972 million), while wholesale revenues rose 14 percent to 214 million pounds ($349 million).

Shares in the company, known for its distinctive red, black and brown plaid fabric, were up 6 percent at 1,216 pence in midmorning trade on the London Stock Exchange.

Federal authorities say a stock trader and a lawyer, working with a middleman, made millions by using advance knowledge of mergers and acquisitions gleaned from the computers of prestigious New York law firms.

With confidential information plundered from some of New York's most prestigious law firms, a corporate finance attorney, a Wall Street trader and a "middleman" bought hundreds of thousands of shares in companies about to be acquired, selling them when the deals were done to net millions of dollars in instant profit, federal officials allege.

After each haul — totaling at least $32 million over nearly 17 years, according to federal investigators — the men met in Atlantic City casinos, where they believed they could share their large cash spoils without attracting attention.

But on Wednesday, in one of the biggest insider trading cases to date, authorities arrested the lawyer and the trader. No charges have been filed against the unnamed middleman.

The two arrested men, Matthew H. Kluger, a Washington, D.C., attorney, and Garrett D. Bauer, a professional stock trader, have each been charged with more than a dozen counts of securities fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice. They also face insider trading charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.