Last night’s passage of a deal on the fiscal cliff in the U.S. House of Representatives has lit a fire under stock futures this morning. The DJIA is up more than 160 points (about 1.3%), the S&P 500 is up more than 23 points (1.7%) and the Nasdaq is up about 53 points (2%) as New Year trading gets set to begin.

Financial stocks are getting a nice boost this morning, with Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) up more than 2%, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) up about 1.7%, Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), up 1.4% and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) up about 1%.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is up nearly 3% in premarket trading, and Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has jumped about 2.6%. Other tech stocks making solid moves this morning include Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), up 1.7%; Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), up 2.2%; and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), up nearly 3%.

Other heavily traded stocks posting gains this morning include Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F), up nearly 2%; Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM), up 3%; Sirius XM Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI), up 2%; and General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), up 1.7%.

And while stock futures are not a sure-fire predictor of market performance once trading actually begins, equities look better this morning than they did at this time a day or two ago.

Paul Ausick

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