Thursday Curtain Raiser

It was Apple's turn to wow them this evening. Here's a breakdown of the metrics:

• 2nd quarter EPS of 87c vs estimates of 67c
• Q2 rev of 5.26 bln vs est of $5.16 bln
• Sees Q3 earnings of 66c vs ests of 67c
• Sees Q3 revenue of $5.1 bln vs estimates of $5.47 bln
• AAPL shipped 1.517 mln Macs (36% year over year growth; 3x industry growth rate)
• AAPL shipped 10.549 mln iPods in Q2 (24% yoy growth)
• AAPL gross margin 35.1% Q2 up from 29.8% a year ago
• International sales accounted for 43% of Q2 sales.

Yes, those are great numbers and Thursday will indeed be showing the gap to above $100 that was so painfully elusive after last quarter's earnings. The Apple surge to the $102 level tonight should be beneficial for the sentiment overall Thursday.

Thursday economic calendar is fairly quiet with just Jobless Claims to be released at 8:30 et.

Dozens more companies will post earnings including numbers from big names like AET, MMM, BMY, HAL, HIG, FO, HIG, F (lotta buying in F May8 calls recently), XOM, ODP, ETR, MSFT and NEM just to name a few.