Stocks are weaving in and out of postive territory after posting the first weekly gain this year.
Investors are weighing the victory of anti-austerity party Syriza in Greece’s election and a massive snow storm hitting the Northeast.
Yahoo Finance Columnist Rick Newman says the problem is that Greece has no leverage because the country is broke.
“I don’t think they’re going have much luck being able renegotiate the bailout terms. So, I think we are going to get some drama in Europe in February, for sure,” Newman points out.
IBM (IBM) shares are higher in early trading on unconfirmed reports that it’s getting set to slash 26% of its workforce, or nearly 112,000 jobs as part of reorganization plan dubbed "Project Chrome." The massive jobs cuts would be the biggest in IBM's history and comes after the company reported its 11th straight quarter of declining revenue. However, CNBC Jon Fortt is reporting that the number of layoffs could be much smaller, in the range of 10,000 or less.
IBM issued this statement on the rumored layoffs to Yahoo Finance.
"IBM does not comment on rumors, even ridiculous or baseless ones. If anyone had checked information readily available from our public earnings statements, or had simply asked us, they would know that IBM has already announced the company has just taken a $600 million charge for workforce rebalancing.
Last year, IBM hired 45,000 people, and the company currently has about 15,000 job openings around the world for new skills in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security, and social and mobile technologies. This is evidence that IBM continues to remix its skills to match where we see the best opportunities in the marketplace.”
Related: IBM job cuts?; D.R. Horton soars on beat; AT&T expands in Mexico
Microsoft (MSFT) getting set to kick off a big week for tech earnings. The company is scheduled to release quarterly results for the last three months of 2014 after the stock market closes. Investors will be looking to see how holiday sales of its Xbox One and Surface tablet fared after an aggressive ad campaign. Analysts expect Microsoft to report record revenue of $26.3 billion, but profits are seen slipping to from a year earlier to $0.71 a share.
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D.R. Horton (DHI) shares are soaring after the nation's largest homebuilder reported earnings and revenue that topped analysts' estimates. Revenue jumped 38% from a year earlier as the company sold more homes.
AT&T (T) shares are also in the spotlight this morning. The wireless provider is expanding its footprint in Mexico. AT&T is buying Nextel Mexico from NII Holdings for about $2 billion. The deal will give AT&T access to 76-million people in Nextel Mexico's network.
Cablevision (CVC) also on investors’ watch list. The company is becoming the first cable provider to offer WiFi for mobile phones. The service--dubbed Freewheel--will begin in the New York area where Cablevision already has more than a million WiFi hot spots.
Related: Cablevision is dialing up your cellphone
Some positive news for a change on salaries. A new survey by the National Association for Business Economics finds more than 51% the firms polled plan to raise wages in the next three months. That's significantly higher from the previous survey in October.
