Today was an extremely volatile day that started with gains, then in the early afternoon stocks swung to moderate losses, then rallied into the close to finish mixed. There was no shortage of news to move the markets today. The bears were pointing to continued poor housing news and rising oil prices as a reason to sell. The bulls were talking of solid valuations and solid tech earnings as a reason to buy. The Dow finished lower by 20 points. The S&P 500 eeked out a gain of 3 points. The Nasdaq surged higher by 29 points. 
The technology stocks were the real leader of the market today. Intel Corporation (Nasdaq:INTC) and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) both blew away their earnings estimates last night, and the two led the tech charge higher today, gaining 4.87% and 7.98% respectively. VMWare Inc. (NYSE:VMW) shares gained 4.05% today, rebounding from some of the past weeks losses. NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq:NVDA) charged higher by 7.68% as investors bid the stock up due to Intel's terrific earnings guidance. MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE:WFR) rose by 2.52% on the day. Marvell Technology Group (Nasdaq:MRVL) shares gained 3.62%. The pin action from the Intel report clearly was very widespread.
The group that saw the largest gains today was clearly the Chinese energy stocks. These stocks of energy companies that are based in China have been surging for the past few days, and today's gains were absolutely amazing. PetroChina Company Limited (NYSE:PTR) gained 14.55% on the day, bringing its gains for the past week to over 40%. China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (NYSE:SNP) shares jumped 16.18%. Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical (NYSE:SHI) surged by 16.56% on more than 4x its average daily volume. Domestic energy companies were actually mostly lower despite another new high in crude oil prices. National-Oilwell Varco (NYSE:NOV) shares lost 2.51% and Smith International (NYSE:SII) lost 2.49% today.
Gold stocks came under pressure today despite gold futures staying strong. Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX) lost 3.16% on the day. Goldcorp (NYSE:GG) shares fell by 2.02%.
Not that it was a surprise, but housing starts plunged again last month. The depth of the plunge was concerning, as the numbers showed a 10.2% decline year over year. The CPI came in about as expected with just a 0.2% gain in the core CPI number, suggesting that inflation is still in check. This is the fourth consecutive month that the core CPI has came in at a steady 0.2%.
Volume on the street was heavy today as traders reacted to all of the news on the street. The Nasdaq saw 2.4 billion shares traded today, while the NYSE saw about 1.45 billion. The NYSE had an interesting number today, as there were 126 new highs and 126 new lows. both exchanges had advancers edging decliners by about 50%-47%.
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