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Stocks are closing sharply higher for a second day as evidence mounts that the housing market is making a comeback.
The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 175 points to 14,075 Wednesday, its highest close of the year.
It's up nearly 300 points over the past two days, putting it within 100 points of its record high reached in October 2007.
Home builder stocks surged as more positive news about housing rolled in. Hovnanian soared 5 percent to $6.06 and Lennar rose 2 percent to $38.94.
A realty group said the number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes jumped in January to the highest level in almost three years.
Three stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was low, 3.4 billion shares.
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';
shareDiv.innerHTML = templateHTML;
/* append the new div to the end of the document, which is hidden already with CSS */
document.body.appendChild(shareDiv);
/* Store the div in both a regular JavaScript variable and as a jQuery object so we can reference them faster later */
var shareTip = document.getElementById('shareTip'),
$shareTip = $('#shareTip');
/* This extends our settings object with any user-defined settings passed to the function and returns the jQuery object shareTip
was called on */
return this.each(function() {
if (options) {
$.extend(settings, options);
}
/* This is a hack to make sure the shareTip always fades back to 100% opacity */
var checkOpacity = function (){
if ( $shareTip.css('opacity') !== 1 ){
$shareTip.css({'opacity': 1});
}
};
/* Function that replaces the HTML in the shareTip with the template we defined at the top */
/* It will wipe/reset the links on the social media buttons each time the function is called */
var removeLinks = function (){
shareTip.innerHTML = templateHTML;
};
/* This is the function that makes the links for the Tweet / Share functionality */
var makeURLS = function (link, message){
/* Here we construct the Tweet URL using an array, with values passed to the function */
var tweetConstruct = [
'http://twitter.com/share?url=', link, '&text=', message, '&via=', settings.twitter_account
],
/* Then join the array into one chunk of HTML */
tweetURL = tweetConstruct.join(''),
/* Same story for Facebook */
fbConstruct = [
'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=', link, '&src=sp'
],
fbURL = fbConstruct.join(''),
newHTML = [
''
],
shareHTML = newHTML.join('');
/* Load in our new HTML */
shareTip.innerHTML = shareHTML;
};
/* Since the shareTip will automatically fade out when the user mouses out of an element */
/* we have to specifically tell the shareTip we want it to stay put when the user mouses over it */
/* This effectively gives the user a 500 ms (or whatever) window to mouse */
/* from the element to the shareTip to prevent it from popping out */
$shareTip.hover(function(){
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
$shareTip.show();
checkOpacity();
}, function(){
$(this).fadeOut(settings.speed);
});
/* This function handles the hover action */
$(this).hover(function(){
/* remove the old links, so someone doesn't accidentally click on them */
removeLinks();
/* If there's already an animation running on the shareTip, stop it */
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;
link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);
if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);
/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top
