World stocks hit five-week highs on Tuesday on optimism a U.S. plan to purge toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets could ease the misery of the sector, but the rally also provided investors a chance to take profits.

The dollar rose against the yen and the euro on hopes the U.S. plan, detailed on Monday by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, will revive the world’s largest economy.

This helped the dollar to halt last week’s slide, which was sparked by the Fed’s plan to buy government debt as part of a move to expand its balance sheet.

The MSCI World index, a gauge of global stocks performance, rose 0.5 percent after rising to its highest level since mid-February. The index, which fell to a six-year low on March 9, has risen in 10 of the last 11 sessions.

The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European

CME to gain new rival as New York-based ELX sets plans to start operations in June. 

A new futures exchange  backed by some of the biggest banks and broker-dealer groups in the world is apparently ready to begin operations in June. 

The Electronic Liquidity Exchange is aiming to break the "near-monopoly" grip the Chicago Mercantile Exchange  has on futures markets in the U.S., according to the Financial Times. 

The New York City-based exchange was established by a dozen financial firms: Bank of America, Barclays Capital, BGC Partners, Citadel, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, GETCO, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, PEAK6 and The Royal Bank of Scotland.

In October 2008, ELE named  Neal Wolkoff as its chief executive. He was a former CEO of the American Stock Exchange. Before that he served as chief operating officer of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

At that time, Wolkoff said: "Initially, ELX will focus on the significant opportunity to bring lower transaction