Hello traders!

US stocks ended higher Tuesday, helped by a retreat in crude-oil prices and some solid earnings reports from United Technologies and Coca-Cola.

The Dow was up 51.47 points at 10,798.83 at its unofficial close. The S&P500 rose 2.33 points to 1,236.82 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 5.5 points at 2,043.23.

See you in the morning with the latest....

G.

Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Hang Seng ended the morning up 99.77 points at 16,143.71, while the Nikkei was recently up 87.15 points at 14,524.39.

New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for delivery in August, was at $73.91 a barrel, up 37 cents from $73.54 in late US trading overnight.

Early broker notes:

BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto relatively cheap - Goldman Sachs
DEBENHAMS INITIATED 'NEUTRAL' AT GOLDMAN SACHS; PRICE TARGET 198P
TAYLOR WOODROW UPGRADED TO 'OVERWEIGHT' VS 'EQUAL-WEIGHT' AT MORGAN STANLEY
CENTRICA UPGRADED TO 'OVERWEIGHT' VS 'UNDERWEIGHT' AT JP MORGAN

Happy trading!

G.

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