PRE MARKET

The big story this morning is IBM as it is up almost $10. IBM reported lower earnings and sales from the year before but BETTER THAN EXPECTED. Of course, IBM used about an 11% tax rate. But in the spirit of IT’S NOT THE NEWS, IT’S HOW MARKETS REACT TO THE NEWS, we take no issue. This will surely open the Dow above 23,000 (yippee) as that’s about 70 Dow points. BTW, up until this morning, IBM is trading just above where it was in the year 2000.

Leader LRCX also reported…and they were strong numbers. Up about $3. Keep in mind, semis have had a strong run.

For the rest of the week, earnings out of:

AXP, EBAY, BBT, BK,DHR, DNKN, ITW, KEY, URI, KEY, NUE, PM, PHM, PPG, SAP, TRV, UNP, VZ, ETFC, ISRG, KLAC, MXIM, PYPL, STLD, GE, HON, KSU, SLB, STI….and that’s just the beginning.

NDX futures hardly up but DOW futures better because of IBM.