February 6, 2014: Markets opened higher on Thursday and continue to post gains throughout the day. After a beating in January and the first week of February, traders were snapping up bargains, shorts were covering their bets, and rising yields on 10-year Treasuries all added up to solid gains. The DJIA closed up 1.22%, the S&P 500 closed up 1.24%, and the Nasdaq Composite closed up 1.14%.

The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) was the big gainer among the Dow 30 stocks. Shares closed up 5.28% at $75.55 in a 52-week range of $53.41 to $76.84. Disney posted earnings growth of 32% and revenue growth of 8.5% after markets closed last night. Cable sports network ESPN and two hit movies led the parade of good news. Disney’s volume today was about 2.5-times higher than the daily average of around 7 million shares.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) put up a nice gain of 2.27% to close at $22.48. The networking giant has recently signed cross-licensing agreements with Samsung and Google, two deals that reduce the risks of patent lawsuits. Trading volume was about 7% below the daily average of around 47 million shares traded.

S&P 500 company Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) gained 3.43% for the day to close at $24.11, after posting a new 52-week high of $24.77 earlier in the day. The stock’s annual low is $7.63. A report from Taiwanese technology website Digitimes said that DRAM demand will rise nearly 10% in 2014. Micron’s share volume was more than 65% above the daily average of around 38 million shares.

A non-index stock that traded unusually large volume at a big loss today was Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR). The company reported disappointing results last night. Shares closed down 24.13% at $50.05 in a 52-week range of $38.80 to $74.73. Traders are waiting to see if today’s dive marks a bottom before wading in to pick up shares on the cheap. Volume was nearly 3-times the daily average of around 22 million shares.

Another non-index stock, Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) dropped 7.18% today to close at $7.89 in a 52-week range of $5.61 to $11.47. Sprint and parent SoftBank Corp. are about to decide if a bid for T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS) has a chance of making it through regulatory review. Yesterday the stock rose and today if fell on no more information than that. Volume was about 25% higher than the daily average of 20 million shares traded.

Of the Dow 30 stocks only 3 closed lower today while 27 closed higher.

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