Why the Dow Is Rallying This Morning

Despite General Electric (NYSE: GE  ) reporting flat earnings this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI  ) is rallying for a fourth day in a row as U.S. home sales rose 5%. At 10 a.m. EST, the Dow was up 30 points to 12,653. The S&P 500 (Nasdaq: ^GSPC  ) was down three points to 1,311.

General Electric reported disappointing earnings before the market opened, with earnings falling 18% to $0.39 per share. This was above the Street's expectation of $0.38 per share, but revenue missed big -- $38 billion versus expectations of $40 billion. In early trading, GE fell 2.4% before rising to be down just 1%.

U.S. home sales data from the National Association of Realtors is the big news of the morning, rising 5% to a 4.61 million annualized rate. This rise has helped housing inventory up for sale to fall to the lowest level since 2005.

Today's top Dow stock is IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) . The company is leading the pack, up 3.6% to $187.17. Runner-up is Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) , up 3.45% to $29.08. Both of these tech giants reported positive earnings last night, and our senior technology analyst, Eric Bleeker, believed correctly that they would drive the Dow higher today.

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