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Wall Street watchers can be excused for feeling a little whipsawed this week. After watching stocks lose ground early in the week, they roared back Thursday, riding high on a bevy of upbeat earnings reports. That enthusiasm remains partially on display this morning with two of the three major U.S. stock indexes showing a positive opening ahead of the morning bell.

At about 7 a.m. ET, the Nasdaq Composite Index and S&P 500 were slightly higher, while the Dow Jones industrial average was down by about 4 points. The Dow gained 1.3% Thursday to close the session at 10,081.31, led by the strong earnings reports from five of the benchmark index's 30 component stocks.

In the world's northern hemisphere, the heat is on, and Honeywell is happy, for the reasons stated below.

I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for Honeywell International (NYSE: HON), first recommended on February 25, 2009 at a price of $28.26. If you bought Honeywell then, you're up about 35%.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the weak dollar is benefiting U.S. corporations and no longer going against them.

Why have the industrials been so red-hot? Why do they seem to levitate? One reason, of course, is that people think the economy's getting better. A second reason is that even if the economy stands still vs. last year the comparisons will be amazing and nothing gets the juices going more rapidly than easy comparisons.

Why will they be so glaring? First, the layoffs have been brutal, the cost-cutting immense and it hasn't hurt at all ... yet. It is totally and unequivocally positive.

Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) is a diversified technology and manufacturing company. The stock tripled in price from late 2002 to early 2007.

But in June 2008, the stock broke support and plunged. By November, it was trading for less.

If you're looking for the most accurate way to predict the direction a stock or the market is headed, technical analysis is it.

Of course, no chart pattern is accurate all of the time (which is why technical analysis is more of an art than a science), but it's the closest you're going to get to a sure thing in the stock market.

So I'm offering up six technical trades today. Each of these stocks' charts are giving off extremely bullish signals and look ready to run higher.

Trading volume and news activity were both fairly impressive when you consider just how many traders and investors have headed for the hills or for the beach ahead of the Labor Day weekend. This morning's weak jobless claims did little to offer any great hope for Friday's unemployment and payrolls data. But less-bad retail data kept some positive sentiment alive. This was another one of those days where the overall bull or bear was a mystery figure until the close.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,343.47 +62.80 (0.68%)
S&P 500 1,003.16 +8.41 (0.85%)
Nasdaq 1,983.20 +16.13 (0.82%)

Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades
Top Day Trader Alerts

U.S. stock futures advanced Monday morning, ahead of yet another week full of corporate reports, with some heavyweights already reporting this morning. Investors will be looking to see if results continue to top projections on average. Meanwhile, investors will digest some of Bernanke's remarks as they await more housing data due out after the market opens.

[Update 9:00 a.m.: Futures turned direction following several disappointing earnings reports this morning.]

Markets have rallied the past two weeks alongside earnings season. This week, over 140 companies of the S&P 500 are due to report. This morning it is Aetna (NYSE: AET), Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), Honeywell International (NYSE: HON) and Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ). Analysts are raising U.S. profit estimates for the first time since credit markets froze two years ago, with the S&P 500 earnings estimates now at $74.55 a share next year, up from $72.54 in May, indicating a potential 26 percent increase in the S&P 500.

I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for Honeywell International, Inc. (NYSE: HON) first recommended on February 25, 2009 at a price of $28.26.

The growth proposition for Honeywell remains intact. Large order backlogs by commercial airline manufacturers, including The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA), will support revenue in FY2009.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says stock prices may roll back, but techs and financials should be fine.

The pain of the aftermath of mark-ups never goes away. We knew what was in store for us, as the mark-up folks don't like to play on the last day, especially with the newly vigilant Securities and Exchange Commission. I have to believe that this SEC will now become more interested in "the tapes," which would show clients asking brokers to take stocks up as much as they can, something that we know is against the law.

What comes up from mark-up must come down, and the most important "come-downs" should be in the industrials, because we have the least visibility in them. I do not believe the techs have as much to worry about, nor the banks, because both have excellent earnings prospects for the coming quarter. Why sell Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take) here? Why sell Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take)? And why dump Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) (Cramer's Take) or Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) (Cramer's Take) or JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) (Cramer's Take) when those have the best possibilities of good news ahead? I can see locking in some Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) (Cramer's Take) gains, but that's going to be the best quarter of all.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says they make the most sense in this vicious market.

It didn't take long, but the accidental high-yielders are back. There's PPG Industries (NYSE: PPG) (Cramer's Take) back at 5%, where it was before it told us that March was a good month and April better.

There's Emerson Electric (NYSE: EMR) (Cramer's Take) over 4% even though last week it said orders lately had been better than expected. Or Honeywell (NYSE: HON) (Cramer's Take), so close to 4%, amazing, given that it reaffirmed earnings last week.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says that it is too easy to sit here and take direction from the oil futures.

The one-wayness of this new market, the one that started with banks, tech and oil and that has now has come back down to just oil, isn't something that can last. We can't come in here every day and know that the news is not so hot, and what Ben Bernanke said yesterday about the deficit and where he thinks we are is not so hot, and have all of those reasons for a pause trumped by a dollar rise in the oil futures.

It just doesn't make sense, but it is where we are.

I've been doing a fair amount of chest puffing lately, as many of my moves suggested here and elsewhere have paid huge dividends for investors. Today, I want to highlight one of my mistakes: General Electric Company (NYSE: GE).

Someone is going to own one heck of an asset when this all shakes out. Unfortunately for GE shareholders, there is a very real risk that you will be on the outside looking in when all is said and done.

Each day the odds are growing that bondholders or the government will end up owning the equity in GE. Given the long-term future of the company, those two parties will be quite pleased.

In this market, it goes without saying that caution remains the watchword. Until the U. S. Treasury Department's program for toxic asset removal from the banking system has been clarified, there's an added layer of risk for a stock investment. And this unknown sits atop a U.S. recession that enters its 16th month in March.

Still, there are bargains to be had for risk-tolerant investors, and along that line, Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) is worth a review.

Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) Q4 profit rose on higher prices, and its forecast matched expectations.
• Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) Q4 earnings grew on cost cutting but revenue remained flat.
• Black & Decker Corp. (NYSE: BDK) shares tanked after the dismal Q4 report, and it announced job cuts.
• Carpenter Technology Corp. (NYSE: CRS) Q2 numbers resulted in a downgrade from one analyst.
• ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) reported a Q4 loss due to writedowns from recent acquisitions.
• DuPont (NYSE: DD) swung to a bigger-than-expected Q4 loss and its revenue fell as well.
• Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY) swung to a Q4 loss on acquisition costs but reaffirmed its guidance.

Honeywell (NYSE: HON - option chain) shares are just about unchanged this morning after the company posted a fourth-quarter profit of $707 million, or 97 cents per share, on revenue of $8.7 billion. Analysts had been looking for a profit of 97 cents per share on revenue of $8.97 billion. In an environment like this, flat on earnings is actually pretty good in my book. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on HON.

HON opened this morning at $32.72. So far today the stock has hit a low of $32.50 and a high of $34.24. As of 11:55, HON is trading at $32.48, down 19 cents (0.6%). The chart for HON looks bullish and S&P gives HON a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy ranking.