component. so that helps out the dow as well. the other issue is the first of the financials to report. the market s taking this as a cue to what we might see from other big financials like bank of america, goldman sachs that are all due to report in the coming weeks. so across the board if you re looking at the financial stocks, they are all showing some green arrows today. throughout the course of the day. but again, the financials look like they are going to get things started off to a very strong start on wall street today. we did get some economic numbers that were not fantastic. retail sales for the month of march came in. and they were up 0.4%. that s the lowest gain we ve seen since all the way back to june of last year. and that had some people a little concerned. but again, if you strip out the autos numbers, it was up 0.8%. people shaking off concerns. later today, they ll be watching that budget speech from i was just going to say, how much could it impact the market
it s also what they call a tank buster. it was incredibly effective here, but it s been on standby until they have to turn over control of that of the operation. now what ear seeing is a situation in the western city of misrata that they re coming increasingly worse. it is becoming a real humanitarian disaster there. chuck and savannah? all right, stephanie gosk with an unfolding situation in libya. let s turn to wall street to see where the markets are headed. cnbc s becky quick joins us now with more. good morning. good morning. it looks like this morning we re going to be off to a strong start for the markets. so far it looks like the dow will open up by 60 or 70 points when the market opens in just about ten minutes time. a lot of this is coming because of some strong earnings numbers that we ve gotten this morning. specifically from jpmorgan chase. it is a major dow component that s out with numbers that are better than expected both in terms of earnings and in terms of r
things out. over the last couple of weeks, we have seen some gains. 1.5% up despite the unrest in egypt. they are tracking these things very, very closely, but the budget news and talks has taken some tension. we have been watching oil prices and those stabilized as well. they are down by about 4 cents to $85.53. keeping an eye on numbers from washington. retail and inflation numbers are coming up on tuesday and wednesday. we wanted to let you know about an interesting call about a major dow component. wal-mart and jpmorgan is downgradeing for a neutral to an overweight. key categories, weakness in discretionary spending and they will take years to fix and not something overnight. that s one stock to keep an eye on. back to you. did you say wal-mart was
nicole, two things i m curious about. one, the bernanke testimony. two, the obama administration float of this idea of massively revamping fannie and freddie. how will the markets react? two good points. no oklahoma sound track when you re looking at futures. they re a little lower this morning, but we did have a boufl day yesterday. clocked in decent gains. the dow closed higher for the seventh straight session. no big data out today, but dow component coca-cola just reported and had strong numbers. but chuck, you re right. lots of fed talk on the hill today and that s what wall street is is going to be watching. in one room, we have ben bernanke testifying before the house budget committee and potentially sparring with paul ryan. then in another room at the same time at 10:00 in the morning, we have ron paul holding a hearing about whether or not record low
i heard what mike said, and i thought, no, no, no. no more snow. we re sick of it. let me tell you about wall street today. things are looking sunnier there. the dow jones industrial average will open up by about 45 points today. that s the good news. also good news from the companies coming out with earnings today. primarily general electric, which is a dow component. that s important. that s part of the reason for the gains on the dow futures. general motors came out with better than expected news. more important is what they had to say about the economy. organic growth was up 6%. that s good news. when you see the industrial numbers out, that s when things start to lead to jobs. there was good commentary there. also strong performance at ge capitol. ge shares look like they ll be higher today. we ve been watching shares of bank of america. they also came out with earnings now. there were confusing numbers in it because they had some charges that the street wasn t expecting