Stocks saw a strong open this morning, with the Dow rising 135 points after a positive quarterly report from IBM and a rally in European stocks, the Wall Street Journal reports. But investors were also mulling a worse-than-expected jobs report. Though new jobless claims fell by 20,000 last week, moving off a 7-year high, analysts had expected a slightly bigger decline.
IBM reported a 20% jump in profits, leading shares to gain 5.3%, as the Nasdaq and S&P gained 2% and 1.5% respectively. It was a bitter anniversary on Wall Street: One year ago today the Dow hit its all-time high. Today also marks the first day that financial stocks can once again be shorted, after a three-week freeze. (More stock market stories.)