Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn., Dave Beal column.

By Dave Beal, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 1--The stock market's late-year surge lifted many Minnesota stocks, enabling most to end up as winners for the year overall.

Roughly three of every five stocks in the Pioneer Press 100, a list of the state's 100 largest publicly held companies, rose in 2004. They fared notably better in the fourth quarter, when four of five advanced.

"A great deal of euphoria came into the market after the election," says Tony Carideo, a former business journalist and securities analyst here who now operates an investor relations firm in Minneapolis.

Carideo attributes much of the upbeat mood to investors' relief that the uncertainties are over about who will occupy the White House for the next four years. He adds that falling oil prices also have dashed anxieties of investors who fretted about the rapid rises in these prices earlier last year.

Yet 2004 was not nearly as good for …