Wonderful housing numbers, strong consumer confidence, and perhaps even a few positive words from Ben Bernanke gave investors enough courage to pour cash back into the markets after yesterday's big late-day decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 0.52%) added 115 points or 0.84% today and now sits at 13,900. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both also closed in positive territory, though still slightly lower than the Dow. The S&P 500 gained 0.61%, while the Nasdaq rose by 0.43%. Six of the Dow's 30 stocks ended the session in the red, but eight closed up after gaining more than 1%, and nine others were up more than 0.8% for the day. So let's look at a few of the big winners during today's bullish rally.
After the positive housing numbers this morning, it was a given that Home Depot (HD 0.77%) would be up today. But housing numbers alone wouldn't push shares higher by 5.69%. The company released earnings yesterday after the market closed in which EPS of $0.68 crushed last year's performance by 32% and topped analysts' estimates of $0.64 per share. Revenue performed similarly, as it was expected to hit just $17.7 billion and came in at $18.25 billion, an increase of 14% over the same quarter last year.
Shares of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ 0.16%) were soaring high again today as well. The stock popped 3.78% during the regular trading session after CEO Meg Whitman said management will look into selling business units or projects that don't fit into management's plans, but that it will keep the major operating units. Just yesterday, HP announced that it was selling its WebOS operating system and its accompanying engineering staff. HP will now use the Android operating system for its new devices.
Finally, shares of Intel (INTC 0.22%) rose by 1.73% today. Investors pushed the stock price higher after it was announced late yesterday that the company will develop chips for Altera. My Fool colleague Anders Bylund noted that it wasn't known how large of an order was placed, but Altera is a decent-sized company, and because of slowing demand for Intel's PC chips, any additional revenue the company can get right now is a good thing.
