Third Of The Way Through

Dismal reports on home sales, consumer confidence, and consumer spending (see TGT) were off-set by a significant drop in oil prices, good news from Texas Instruments (TXN) and a big buyback from IBM. I'm also quite sure that eager anticipation for Dow 13K is also playing a role in the big cap performance.

However, below the surface the market internals (i.e. more declining issues then advancing) were not very comforting while volume picked up quite a bit over yesterday. Nothing to get too concerned about especially given the gains we've seen this month, but certainly something to keep an eye on.

While it doesn't seem like it, were now only a third of the way through with earnings season. Given the headlines today, the bulls would probably like earnings season to continue indefinitely since most of the reports on the economy haven't been too impressive. See you tomorrow!