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The Dow bolted out of the gate Tuesday as a slew of components beat earnings expectations. But there were pockets of weakness throughout the market, including chips, hardware, banks and retail. The Nasdaq was lower.
Caterpillar [CAT
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] was the biggest market mover, with shares jumping more than 12 percent after the contruction-equipment manufacturer beat earnings expectations and raised its outlook.
A slew of other Dow components also beat, including Merck [MRK
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], Coca-Cola [KO
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] and Dupont [DD
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United Technologies [UTX
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] narrowly beat expectations but lowered its full-year outlook.
Texas Instruments [TXN
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] followed in Intel's [INTC
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] footsteps, topping earnings expectations when it reported after the bell Monday.
After the bell today, reports are due out from Apple [AAPL
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] , Advanced Micro Devices [AMD
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], Starbucks [SBUX
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].
Sandwiched inbetween this double-decker day of earnings, Fed Chairman Bernanke will deliver his semi-annual testimony on the state of the economy before the House, which started at 10 am ET, a performance he'll repeat tomorrow morning before the Senate.
Once again, investors will be focused not only on the state of the economy, but any comments on exit strategies from the Fed's extraordinary measures that were put in place to deal with the financial crisis. Bernanke does discuss that very subject in an op-ed in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.
CIT Group [CIT
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] tumbled more than 15 percent after the lender said it may have to seek bankruptcy if enough notes aren't tendered by its deadline. The stock had more than tripled since touching an all-time low of 31 cents a share last Thursday amid buzz that it had had reached an agreement for emergency funding from bondholders. CIT formally announced the agreement Monday evening.
Tech stocks retreated after their recent run — the Nasdaq registered its ninth consecutive winning session Monday, its first such streak since July 8-20 of 1998.
Even Apple was lower ahead of its earnings tonight, which are expected to dazzle once again. CNBC's Jim Goldman will be live-blogging the conference call, which is slated to start at 2 pm PT/5 pm ET, on his Tech Check blog.
On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 104.21, or 1.2 percent, to close at 8,848.15, its sixth straight gain. The S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent to 951.13, an eight-month high.
— Peter Schacknow, CNBC Senior Producer, contributed to this report
Still to Come:
It's a jam-packed week of earnings, with about a third of the S&P — and half the Dow — reporting.
TUESDAY: Bernanke's semi-annual testimony before Congress; Earnings from Apple, Yahoo, AMD and Starbucks after the bell
WEDNESDAY: Weekly mortgage applications; weekly crude inventories; Earnings from Boeing, Glaxo, Morgan Stanley, Pepsi, Pfizer, Wells Fargo, Bank of NY Mellon; Delta; KeyCorp; SunTrust, US Bancorp, Qualcomm, eBay and Sandisk
THURSDAY: Weekly jobless claims; existing-home sales; Earnings from AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ford, MMM, CIT Group, Fifth Third, PNC Financial, UPS, Xerox, Amazon, AmEx, Microsoft, Broadcom and Capital One
FRIDAY: Earnings from Ericsson, Ingersoll-Rand, Schlumberger; Red Hat replaces CIT in S&P 500 after the closing bell
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