Evening State of Play

Nasdaq futures are up about 6 points tonight following the better than expected earnings from eBay. So the stage is set tonight for more positive momo tomorrow, but there will be more earnings that you can shake a stick at tomorrow. A.M. highlights: AT&T, Kimberly Clark, NCR, Ford, Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grummin, Occidental Petroleum, Amgen and Lockheed Martin. We'll see if the morning batch of earnings changes the mood on the street

The big after the bell report on Thursday will be none other than Microsoft, complete with conference call featuring FrankenSteve Balmer among other key execs.

Sun and Yahoo! grabbed the headline credits for pushing the Nasdaq higher in the mainstream media, but closer examination shows the disk drive makers (Amex Disk Drive Group DDX) provided the strongest jolt to tech with a near 3% gain today as Seagate and Western roared higher. Earlier in the day I noted the Xs or Spiders and how some of them were lagging during the morning and that more power was needed. As the day wore on some of the Spiders came on with a vengeance with XLF (Financials) and XLB (Materials) hitting lifetime highs in turn pushing the NYSE Composite to a lifetime high as well.

Last night I wondered about Google and how it would respond to Yahoo's earnings. Answer: 5% rally, or a $21 surge.

I also wondered whether we'd get to $57 crude this week. That may be a bit too far too fast, but it's pretty amazing the turn of events this week. Don't fight the tape applies to all markets. For the folks who cockily made the crude put bets last week and ignored the "tape"... debacle. Of course, the market can still reverse course and fall, and I'll be ready if that happens too!

This has been one of my best trading weeks this year. The volatility has been great. Gold moved $10 from the low of the day today and I had a lot of fun with that. I am out tonight for a breather, but will be rising early with the Europeans to jump back into the frey tomorrow morning.

All of that action in gold even as the dollar is unable to do anything meaningful against the Euro... EuroFX tonight up 1 point basis the March contract.

The Wall Street Journal reports times are a changin' on the floor of the Big Board - the floor brokers are disappearing as automation takes over (Click Here). I worked for a number of years on Wall Street covering markets for FNN and CNBC Radio back in the late 1980's and early 90's; the folks on the floor were always an intense, but pretty pleasant bunch. At some point, CNBC and the coming FOX TV Biz Channel will find broadcast hits from the Big Board floor a less exciting live element, unless for PR purposes the NYSE keeps enough folks around.