Big Wednesday for Markets: Dave's Daily

NEW YORK (ETF Digest) -- The set-up for the day began with last night's spectacular earnings news from Apple (AAPL) and continued with Ben's news conference. In it he forecast a lower unemployment rate by the (cough) election and if that didn't happen he'd launch another round of QE. Inflation doesn't exist and weather is what drove economy higher early in the quarter and lower recently. You need not know anything else.

Durable Goods Orders (-4.2% vs -1.5% expected & prior 1.9%) sank to the lowest level since (gulp) 2009. But Ben would probably attribute this to the weather I guess since markets didn't care. The transportation component plunged a monthly 12.5 percent in March after rising 1.8 percent the month before. Subcomponent weakness was led by a 47.6 percent plunge in new orders for nondefense aircraft (Boeing orders). Defense aircraft increased 15.5 percent while motor vehicles edged up 0.1 percent.

The focus was on Apple and Ben which both produced a tsunami for tech to surf on and the rest of the market just sort of tagged along. And the Facebook IPO is just around the corner. And interesting article from Time magazine reflects how frustrating hot IPOs can be with a quote from yours truly.

News from the eurozone was positive for some corporate earnings and stocks rallied there with Apple as well. Eurozone political news was quickly pushed to the background.

"As you were", was a common command for soldiers and this was sort of the feeling on

e gets from recent market action. Apple is more than just okay and Ben is both optimistic and ready to print if necessary. So let's just go back a few weeks than shall we?

Gold (GLD) was lower early but just as Ben uttered the QE threat/promise the metal rallied immediately. Bonds (IEF) and the dollar (UUP) were weaker in price and commodity (DBC) markets were also stronger with Ben's QE comments.

Earnings are generally beating much lowered estimates which is par for the course. Did you know during the 2008 bear market nearly 50% of earnings reports beat estimates. This game continues.

Volume was modest especially given the dynamic news background. Breadth per the WSJ was positive.

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