With the way the week started you might of thought that the bears might of got the upper hand on stocks. However, strong earnings continue to bode well for the markets. For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (chart) gained 1.53%, the Nasdaq (chart) +2.29%, the S&P 500 (chart) +1.8% and the Russell 2000 (chart) notched a gain of 2.66%.

I believe that the markets can thank Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) which once again blew out earnings in their most recent quarter. Apple earned a staggering $12.30 per share while netting $11.6 billion. This propelled stocks on Wednesday, especially tech stocks. Now if Apple wasn’t enough, Amazon.con (NasdaqGS: AMZN) reported their earnings after the close on Thursday and also blew out estimates by earning $130 million or 28 cents a share compared to the projected 7 cents a share that most analysts expected.

One other factor that certainly didn’t hurt equities was the Federal Reserve’s reiteration of their accommodative monetary policy by indicating that rates will continue to remain low well into 2014. So with a strong earnings reporting season continuing and a friendly Fed, we might just witness new highs in the coming weeks?

Good luck to all 🙂

~George