Markets Up Big on Earnings

Stocks staged a rally today on the strength of profit reports from JP Morgan and Intel. "The bear market is bottoming, and folks are beginning to look beyond the valley of widely known problems to better times ahead," a strategist tells the Wall Street Journal. The Dow ended up 256.80 to 12,619.27, the Nasdaq 64.07 to 2,350.11, and the S&P 30.28 to 1,364.71.

Wells Fargo also posted revenue growth and an optimistic forecast, Bloomberg notes. Some economists disagree that the US is on the verge of a recovery, however. "All the numbers we see keep getting worse," the president of one money-management firms said. "It's just not clear to me what would be the catalyst." (More stock market stories.)