Better than expected results from Alcoa, which traditionally kicks off the quarterly results season, have set the tone for US equities.
The Dow Jones industrial average is up 60 to 13,389 while the broader-based S&P is up 4 at 1,462, after Alcoa revealed it sold aluminium at a higher than anticipated price.
Alcoa “delivered in line results, was somewhat uppish on the demand outlook for aluminium but tempered enthusiasm by warning regarding the impact of the forthcoming battle royal on Capitol Hill over spending and the debt ceiling,” said broker Charles Stanley.
Investors raised a glass to wine producer Constellation Brands after a lower than expected tax rate in the fiscal third quarter contributed to an increase in post-tax earnings of US$109.5mln from US$104.8mln a year earlier.
Earnings per ‘A’ share came in at 52 cents, or 63 cents once one-off items are excluded; the market had pencilled in earnings of 55 cents a share.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite index is up 13 at 3,104, helped by demand for online social network operators Linkedin and Facebook. The latter is expected to make a major announcement soon, having sent out invitations yesterday for a media event.
Linkedin, meanwhile, was up on the news that it now has more than 200mln members.
The UK is enjoying a happy spell as well, with banks leading the way, as brokers queue up to say nice things about the sector.
Part state-owned bank Lloyds (LON:LLOY) is the top riser thanks to an upgrade from Swiss broker UBS.
Analyst John-Paul Crutchley reckons recent developments, including the appointment of an outsider (Mark Carney) as next Bank of England Governor and the easing of liquidity rules, means that the future regulatory agenda will be less aggressive than in the last 18 months.
"In our view, Lloyds is clearly going to deliver rising margins, falling costs and falling provisions which should provide a very strong upswing to profitability and EPS momentum over the next few years," said analyst John-Paul Crutchley.
"Unlike RBS and Barclays which have been lending strongly into the UK mortgage market while contracting balance sheets in other areas, Lloyds has been shrinking both its non-core assets in 2012 and its core lending into the UK mortgage market as well."
Crutchley now tips the stock as a 'buy' and raises his target price to 60p against the current price of 54p, up more than %.
RBS and Barclays also get some Swiss love. UBS’s rating for RBS (LON:RBS) can’t go any higher, as it is already rated as a ‘key buy’, but UBS has upped its price target to 410p. Barclays (LON:BARC) sees its price target bumped up from 255p to 315p.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, meanwhile, has lifted its price target on RBS to 400p from 375p, and now has a fair value of 65p on Lloyds, up from 60p previously.
The FTSE 100 has broken through the 6,100 barrier and is up 55 at 6,109, hitting levels not seen since May 2008.
Other stocks performing well included aerospace engineer Meggitt (LON:MGGT), which, along with GKN (LON:GKN), found itself on the receiving end of an upgrade to 'buy' from Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts. Meggitt is up 3.9%.
At the bottom of the leader board is supermarket chain Sainsbury's (LON:SBRY), down 2.3% despite a record festive trading period.
Camera shop chain Jessops can only dream of having the sort of “problems” with slowing growth that Sainsbury has; the company is said to be on the verge of going into administration in a move which could see 2,000 jobs at risk.
Britain's biggest insurer Aviva (LON:AV.) is off the pace, down 1.4% after a downgrade by Barclays Capital to 'underweight'.
The broker questioned whether the dividend would be cut, suggesting a 15% reduction.
"We believe one of the biggest challenges facing the new Aviva CEO is setting a sustainable dividend level," said analyst Alan Devlin.
Satellite broadcaster BSkyB (LON:BSY) was dropped to 'equal weight' from 'overweight' from Morgan Stanley tipsters, who cast their eye over the media sector today. The downgrade set the shares back 1.6%.
As for the smaller fish, Caledonia Mining (LON:CMCL) and blur Group (LON:BLUR) are battling it out to be the biggest fish in a big pool.
Caledonia leapt 16% when it unveiled plans to boost gold production by an impressive 90% by 2016, while another sparkling quarter of top line growth for crowdsourcing specialist blur has seen the shares hit a new high of 101p, up 16.8%.
Tracking them north was Frontier Mining (LON:FML), up 4.7%, while on the mid cap index, Centamin (LON:CEY) jumped 15.9% after it produced record amounts of gold in its latest quarter in the face of a number of setbacks in Egypt that have included a temporary export embargo and fuel supplies being cut.
Rurelec (LON:RUR) and ZincOx Resources (LON:ZOX) meanwhile reeled in the punters after updates on both businesses.
While Rurelec's boss predicted a "memorable" year for the Latin American power producer, the zinc recycling specialist looks on track to reach full design capacity of 17,700 tonnes per month in the last quarter of 2013. Shares rose 4.8% and 2.4% respectively.
On the downside, Trap Oil Group (LON:TRAP) Trapoil (LON:TRAP) shed 8.7% after it said further work is needed to appraise the potential of its Romeo discovery in the North Sea as field operations there are now ending.
In an update, the firm confirmed the exploration well had found oil and had satisfied the obligations of the licence.
Trap has a 12.5% stake in the well, which was drilled jointly with Total.