OREANDA-NEWS. February 9, 2012. The US indices closed slightly up on Wednesday. S&P 500 Index added 0.22% while Russell was up by 0.12% with Financials as the leaders (+0.77%) and Oil & Gas (-0.55%) as the laggards. Put/call ratio went up to 1.25 and 90-110% skew inched up to 9.59%.

Western Union (-10%) and Moody’s (-1.8%) were among the worst stocks on bad financial forecasts and Ralph Lauren & Cisco were among the winners.

Of 313 S&P 500 Index constituents the EPS of 217 and revenues of 178 companies beat expectations so far.

Asian markets mostly were mixed on Thursday. Hang Seng lost 0.25%, Kospi – 0.2%, Japanese Nikkei added 0.02%. S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.18%. Chinese indices rose on average 0.4-0.7%. Chinese CPI was 4.5% in January, higher then the analysts had estimated (+4.0%), decreasing the chances for further monetary easing.

UK Manufacturing Data, weekly jobless claims will be in focus today.

Earnings season will go on in the US with 14 S&P 500 companies and 31 DJ stoxx companies to report.