The Dow and S&P both ticked up a tenth of a percent, while the Nasdaq ticked down a tenth.

The S&P is up more than 10% so far this year, and the blue-chip Dow has added nearly 6% and is now less than 1% away from breaching the 40,000 level for the first time. While the tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed more than 9% from January through March.

And it's not just stocks that have soared in 2024. Other assets - including gold and bitcoin - have hit record highs, in what Mark Luschini, Chief Investment Strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, calls an "everything rally."

"So collectively it seems to paint a picture in which investors are increasingly and widely assumed to have bought in at this point of the belief that the Federal Reserve is going to be able to thread the needle of bringing down inflation without choking off economic activity, allowing the labor market to stay reasonably healthy. And therefore that should be an inviting environment for risk-based capital which is finding its way into a variety of different instruments."

In company news, shares of Walgreens Boots rose more than 3% after its quarterly earnings in which it recorded an impairment charge on its investment in clinic operator VillageMD.

Home Depot slipped more than half a percent after the home improvement retailer said it would buy building materials supplier SRS Distribution in an $18.25 billion deal in its largest acquisition.

And Estee Lauder jumped more than 6% after BofA Global Research upgraded the cosmetics giant's rating to "buy" from "neutral."

While U.S. equity markets will be closed for the Good Friday holiday, the focus will be on the release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, for clues on the timing and size of rate cuts this year from the central bank.