Stocks fade in last hour...

Stocks lost steam in the last hour ahead of a key earnings report tomorrow from JP Morgan.  Trading today was on very light volume.  Looks like the shorts have been scared out for now, and funds are starting to put money to work.  Any funds that have been sitting in cash have missed a thousand point move in the Dow in the last two weeks.  Those funds have to get in if the market keeps moving higher for fear that they might miss more of the run.

Here's how we finished:

Dow +102
Nas +21
S&P +11 to 1207

Now that we are back above 1200 on the S&P, traders are looking at 1220 as the next key level to break thru.  1300 is the real key level that to me would represent a "Buy" signal.

RIMM services still down...

Research In Motion (RIMM -2.1%) sells off as outages plague its data services for the third straight day, reaching North America and sending Wall Street into withdrawal. As Susquehanna notes, the real problem for RIM isn't any short-term revenue loss, but the building of "negative goodwill," and the potential for even greater customer defections.

JP Morgan reports tomorrow...

J.P. Morgan (JPM) +3.56% , the first of the large U.S. banks reporting third-quarter results, is scheduled to release its latest earnings before the opening bell on Thursday.

Equities trading, which accounts for roughly one-tenth of J.P. Morgan’s revenue, slumped in the third quarter. Even with unusually high trading volumes in August, enough investors had sidelined their money over the summer to cut into trading fees at investment banks following Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States’ national debt, the U.S. debt-ceiling debate, and continued worries over Europe’s sovereign debt problems.

In a research note, Matthew Burnell at Wells Fargo called it a “perfect storm” of complications in the capital markets.

“Equity prices fell in both the U.S. and internationally, debt spreads widened across most products, ‘risk-off’ trades were investors’ focus, and investment banking underwriting and M&A volumes dropped in August and September due to market volatility,” Burnell wrote.

PVH says it will hit the high end of estimates...

PVH, formerly known as Phillips-Van Heusen, gains +6% after saying it expects Q3 and FY11 EPS to be at least at the high end of guidance, as the apparel company reaps the benefits from strong sales in its Calvin Klein and newly acquired Tommy Hilfiger brands. The company said back in August it expects Q3 EPS in the range of $ 1.75 to $1.81 on revenue of between $1.61B to $1.63B.

1:45 pm update...

Stocks are still moving to the upside, as it seems like there is a steady flow of money coming into the market.  Volume is fairly light though.

Dow +175
Nas +40
S&P +21 to 1216

Leading the market higher:

Apple +6.20 to 406.35
Google +9.52 to 552.70
IBM +2.83 to 187.83
Nike +2.47 to 92.30
Phillips Van Heusen +3.11 to 67.15
Netflix +5.81 to 114.40

PlayStation gets hacked...

Sony (SNE) discovers a "large amount" of unauthorized sign-in attempts on its its PlayStation Network and other services, and temporarily freezes about 93,000 user accounts. Only a small fraction of the accounts showed activity by possible intruders, while credit card details are "not at risk."

11:00 am update....

Stocks are broadly higher this morning as it seems there is optimism that the Euro crisis is subsiding.

Dow +96
Nas +32
S&P +14 to 1210

Note: The S&P 500 has climbed back above 1200.  This is a key level hold above...at least for the time being.  Gold and Silver are rallying as they seem to be tied to the Strength of the Euro.  Back when Gold and Silver were selling off, the rumor was that some European funds were selling to raise money for their Euro losses.  Now, as the Euro climbs back higher vs. the dollar, that selling has stopped.

Coinstar benefits from Netflix misstep...

Shares of Coinstar (CSTR), up 3.3%, get a boost from Piper Jaffray after analysts keep an Overweight rating in place to go along with a healthy $68 price target. The firm points to data showing a nice lift to Redbox's DVD kiosk business and web traffic after the Netflix (NFLX +3.9%) pricing debacle turned away a portion of their own customers.

Apple launches iCloud...

Apple (AAPL) opens the door to the cloud with the launch of iCloud - included free with an update to iOS 5. The service is Apple's most ambitious bid to offer a service to sync files in the cloud after previous attempts fell flat, as noted by Steve Jobs - "keeping these devices in sync is driving us crazy." The bottom line: If iCloud is a hit, it could further increase loyalty to Apple's ecosystem of devices and disrupt the plans of cloud storage companies.

EBAY announces new PayPal feature...

EBAY plans to announce a new payment feature, called PayPal Access, designed to allow consumers to use their accounts across the web without having to register individually at every site a purchase is made. With 100M active registered accounts, the company is poised to make a large splash with the new system if it can bring merchants on board.

A123 to supply batteries for Chevy Spark...

A123 Systems (AONE) is up 16% premarket after CNBC reports the company will supply batteries for GM's latest Chevy Spark model.

Analyst moves for today...

ANALYST RECOMMENDATIONS


• Baker Hughes (BHI) price target cut to $69 from $88 at RBC

• Cameron (CAM) price target cut to $60 from $67 at RBC

• Halliburton (HAL) price target cut to $49 from $62 at RBC

• EMC (EMC) price target cut to $26 from $31 at JP Morgan

• Google (GOOG) price target raised to $700 from $650 at Global equities research

• Helmerich & Payne (HP) price target cut to $62 from $75 at RBC

• Nabors (NBR) price target cut to $22 from $32 at RBC

• National Oilwell Varco (NOV) price target cut to $89 from $96 at RBC

• NetApp (NTAP) price target cut to $46 from $55 at JP Morgan

• Patterson Uti Energy (PTEN) price target cut to $27 from $43 at RBC

• Schlumberger (SLB) price target cut to $79 from $95 at RBC

• Seagate Technology (STX) rating cut to neutral from overweight at JP Morgan

• Western Digital (WDC) price target cut to $37 from $50 at JP Morgan

• Xerox (XRX) rating cut to underweight from neutral at JP Morgan

RIMM struggles to fix texting outage...

Research in Motion (RIMM). Millions of BlackBerry users around the world were left without text communication services for a third day on Wednesday as the company struggled to fix what it said was a switching failure in its private network.

Alcoa blames economic slowdown...

Alcoa Inc. (AA). The aluminum producer said an economic slowdown hurt demand and knocked prices for the metal lower, denting its third-quarter profit. Alcoa, the first Dow component company to report third-quarter results, said net earnings were $172 million, or 15 cents per share, compared with $61 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

Good Morning...

Futures are pointing to as higher opening on the heels of a rare session of little movement, where the major averages finished mixed.

The Dow has posted small double-digit losses in two of the past three sessions, but before that, all 14 negative sessions since August 16 had been triple digit drops.

Now, investors are looking ahead to earnings season, with Dow component Alcoa (AA) kicking things off after the closing bell on Tuesday by reporting profit that fell short of estimates.

In the news: President Obama's jobs bill failed to get the 60 Senate votes needed to move forward in an evening vote last night, while senators did approve the controversial bill aimed at convincing China to let the value of its currency rise.