Bulls See Earnings Lifting Stocks
Updated from 7:38 a.m. EDT.
NEW YORK (
) -- Stock market participants we're sure would love to see the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
cross the psychologically important 11,000 level and stick there. It had a solid chance Friday but closed just under 11,000.
Perhaps this week's start of the earnings season will put the stock market over that hump. Our sentiment survey suggests investors think it might.
As of 9:15 a.m. Monday when the poll closed, poll participants who were bullish tallied 685, or 61.1%, of the 1,121 votes cast in TheStreet.com's RealMoney Barometer Poll. Bears scored 293 votes, or 26.1% of the total, while survey-takers who were neutral racked up 143 votes, or 12.8%.
Last week, the Dow gained 0.6% to end at 10,997.35. The
S&P 500
rose 1.4% and the
Nasdaq
gained 2.1%.
Commercial banks was the sector viewed by survey-takers as the most likely to rise this week. Big U.S. banks reporting earnings this week include
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
and
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
.
Precious metals, as has been the case recently, was seen as the sector most likely to decline, followed closely by commercial banks.
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Report
gets the earnings avalanche started on Monday after the stock market closes. In addition, tech bellwethers
Intel
(INTC) - Get Report
and
(GOOG) - Get Report
.
In corporate news Monday,
Palm
( PALM), the smartphone maker, reportedly
this week.
Power producers
Mirant
( MIR) and
RRI Energy
(RRI)
in a stock-swap deal valued at $1.61 billion.
UBS
(UBS) - Get Report
, the Swiss banking giant, said Monday it expects to announce a first-quater pretax profit of at least 2.5 billion Swiss francs ($2.36 billion).
> > Bull or Bear? Vote in Our Poll
-- Written by Joseph Woelfel in New York.