Positive earnings surprises ... are key to any further gains for the overall market.

The reporting earnings season is bringing increasingly more positive than negative surprises.

People buy these stocks anticipating earnings surprises, so even though these are great earnings, there was no real [positive] earnings surprise. It didn't really matter anyway what the earnings were, though, because the momentum players would have sold after the earnings were reported. They buy on the rumor, sell on the news.

We're coming close to a heavy reporting season. We will start to hear positive or ... more than likely negative surprises like what we saw with Computer Associates earlier.

Good earnings are the main support for European markets. We're seeing positive surprises and this will underpin a continuation of the upside trend.

We had originally aimed to complete the latest inventory adjustments for common-grade steel by the end of March, but we now think we need to extend de-stocking efforts in the first quarter (to June).