President Obama's State of the Union address gave stocks a boost today, helping the Dow Jones rise above 12,000. Last night in Obama's address, he promised to focus on job creation and lowering corporate tax rates. Investors were confident in future business after the President said he wanted to close corporate tax loopholes for the first time in 25 years and use that revenue to lower tax rates. It was also encouraging to hear Obama is in support of a five-year freeze on discretionary spending, resulting in the deficit being lowered by $400 billion over the next 10 years. Investors were very pleased with Obama's plans, helping them look past today's weak reports on earnings. Stocks were rising today; the Dow passed the key 12,000 mark.
Today was the first time since 2008 the Dow has been at this level; it is an encouraging sign for the markets. Analysts are crediting today's increase to higher investor confidence following the State of the Union address. Investors also waited for the Federal Reserve's comments on the Central bank's two day policy meeting that ended today; the news didn't heavily affect the markets since investors were pretty sure today's report would show interest rates remain unchanged, which they did. The markets surly didn't rise off of today's corporate earnings. After the close yesterday, Yahoo gave fourth quarter results that came in under what analysts were expecting, sending shares down over 2% in today's session. Shares of Bowing were also falling, as the company said it expects to see earnings per share for the year to be less than analysts were expecting. Boeing said fourth quarter earnings were at $1.56 per share, more than the $1.11 per share analysts forecasted.
Stocks gave up some of their earlier gains, but managed to remain in the positive; all three major indexes were still rising, with the NASDAQ making the most gains. Commodities were rising; both gold and crude oil prices were increasing following yesterday's losses. As the dollar fell versus the pound and the yen; the greenback rose against the euro. With just under an hour left in the trading session, the Dow was still at a gain of 20 points.
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