Back in November, I was cautious on Deere & Company (DE). Yes, you read that correctly: I was cautious on Deere back in November. When it was trading around the $76 level. Let's see, at what price is the stock trading today? At a little after noon, it's exchanging hands for about $95.

As is painfully obvious, my thinking that Deere may have been overvalued late last year has turned out to be rather wrong. As a matter of fact, the one-year chart is defining an attractive uptrend. It's a really fine example of compelling price action.

At the time of this writing, Deere & Company (DE) was down 0.6% to $75.87. Earlier Wednesday, the farm-equipment concern issued its Q4 report. You can't call the market overjoyed by the news, but at the same time, this isn't a huge drop. Volume, however, was on the strong side.

According to the Associated Press, Deere made $1.07 per share. This statistic was much better than the loss of 53 cents per share that was booked in the year-ago period (it should be noted, though, that, as the actual press release indicates, last year's adjusted fourth-quarter income was 23 cents per share). Wall Street was interested in seeing at least 95 cents per share.

Today saw mixed economic data in housing and in industrial production, yet the market rose again. The notion that a fed-exit policy is slowly forming had no significant impact on stocks and mush of the traffic still seems earnings-related.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,309.24 +40.43 (0.39%)
S&P 500 1,099.51 +4.64 (0.42%)
Nasdaq 2,226.29 +12.10 (0.55%)

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Earlier this morning, Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) reported third-quarter earnings that dropped 27% as a result of falling sales during the past quarter. The farming equipment firm reported quarterly earnings of 99 cents per share, easily topping the consensus estimate of 57 cents per share.

While the results crushed the Street's estimate, it fell short of DE's year-ago performance. Quarterly revenue fell 24% compared to a year ago to $5.89 billion -- which again easily bested the consensus estimate for $5.25 billion.

Shares of farm equipment maker Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) received a kick in the teeth last week when JPMorgan Chase & Compnay (NYSE: JPM) reduced its rating on the company to neutral from overweight. JPMorgan was, in part, reacting to a U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast that corn inventories will increase even as demand falls off substantially.

Morgan thus predicted that corn prices are poised to fall, which will in turn threaten farmers' purchasing power. Farm equipment sales appear to have already peaked, the financial firm said.

The shares didn't exactly crash the day of the downgrade, but have steadily slipped and given up the rather impressive gains made during the first full week of trading this year.

This morning Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) reported its second fiscal quarter earnings and the company easily beat analyst estimates. Led by strong international sales, the company earned $2.72 per share which were well above the $2.41 per share estimates that analysts had expected.

Sales for the quarter were a strong $6.68 billion which also past analyst estimates which had been for $6.46 billion.

This strong quarter should really come as no surprise. With the spike in commodities over recent months it is only logical that farmer equipment stocks are going to remain strong.

But what is surprising is where the company showed its strength. Equipment sales in the US and Canada were actually down slightly (3% for the quarter and 4% year to date), but international sales skyrocketed. Sales outside the US and Canada rose by 22% which helped give the company an overall increase of around 5% in total sales.

Traders are buying up the stock in the premarket, pushing shares up 1.5% to $122.50 up $1.84. It will be interesting to see how well the news of the US and Canadian sales figures is digested by Wall Street. I wouldn't be surprised to hear the company discuss the impact of poor weather through the first half of April had on these sales. Yesterday, while liveblogging Home Depot's first quarter conference call we heard a lot of discussion about April weather impacting sales, and this could be a theme that we continue to hear today.

Deere & Co. will be hosting its conference call this morning starting at 10:00 AM EDT, and BloggingStocks will be covering the call in its entirety. So be sure to check back around 10 for complete coverage and up to the minute discussion on the company's call.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor'sObserver.