U.S. stock futures are higher Thursday morning as investors await economic data. Crude oil prices surged above $106 a barrel. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 44 points to 12,065 and S&P 500 futures gained 5.50 points to 1,297.60. Nasdaq 100 futures jumped 16 points to 2,281.

U.S. stocks closed higher Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 0.56% to 12,086, the S&P 500 index inching up 0.29% to 1,298 and the Nasdaq 100 index gaining 0.54% to 2,698.

Data on weekly jobless claims and durable-goods orders for February will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Tech stocks were mostly higher today. The broader indexes of the DJIA and S&P 500 were too close to call until the final minutes of trading. The markets were just that choppy today, even despite the rise seen in Asian markets.

Here were today's closing bell levels:

Dow Jones 12,268.19 -5.07 (-0.04%)
S&P 500 1,332.32 +3.17 (0.24%)
Nasdaq 2,817.18 +7.74 (0.28%)

Top Analyst Calls

"The growth in hand held devices such as the iPhone and iPad has led to a surge in flash NAND demand," suggests Ian Wyatt.

The editor of Top Stock Insights explains, "As a result, there is a lot to like about component supplier Micron Technology (MU). Last year, the company gained market share and became the world's third-largest NAND supplier.

"Micron had a terrific first quarter financial report. Revenue increased by 28% to $2.2 billion from $1.7 billion in 2010. Operating income also increased by a wide margin, surging to $390 million from $201 million last year.

Sprint Nextel Corporation (S) January 5 and February 5 calls are active with total option volume of 240K contracts. December option implied volatility is at 41, January is at 48, February at 53, according to Track Data. Large call volume suggests larger price movement..

Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) January 10 calls are active with total call option volume of 160K contracts (47K puts). December and January option implied volatility is at 54, January is at 49, according to Track Data. Large call volume suggests traders positioning for upside.

Options Update is by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

I was scanning through stocks that made substantial pre-market moves to bring to your attention and I found just that in Micron Technology (MU).

The tech firm was more than 3% lower before the bell thanks to a downgrade from Goldman Sachs. The brokerage cut MU to neutral from buy. Goldman noted that it "underestimated the impact tablets would have on the PC supply chain, with tablets cannibalizing notebooks faster and to a greater degree than we [the brokerage] had expected." Goldman Sachs also stated that MU was negatively impacted by Inotera's delay of its 50mm transition.

Today was a fairly quiet trading day due to the notion that ISM showed a weaker than expected services spending economy. The other notion is that employment trends remained muted as a follow-on to last week's weak employment data. On an interesting side-bar, gold is losing its luster as a safety trade... probably because the price has become ridiculous in dollar terms and any other currency-related terms. A late day recovery kept most markets in the black for the day.

Here were the closing bell levels:

Dow 9,743.62 +57.14 (0.59%)
S&P 500 1,028.06 +5.48 (0.54%)
Nasdaq 2,093.88 +2.09 (0.10%)

Top Analyst Calls

Micron Technology (MU - option chain) shares are rising today with other chip makers today after the Semiconductor Industry Association reported global chip sales rose to $23.1 billion in March, up 58.3% from the March 2009. The sales were also 4.6% up from February. 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 MU.

MU opened this morning at $9.42. So far today the stock has hit a low of $9.42 and a high of $9.81. As of 12:00, MU is trading at $9.78 up 0.43 (4.6%). The chart for MU looks neutral and S&P gives MU a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

After the closing bell Wednesday, Micron Technology (MU) reported a second-quarter profit of 39 cents per share. The semiconductor firm's results topped both last year's loss of 99 cents per share and the consensus estimate of 24 cents per share.

Quarterly revenue totaled $1.96, up from $993 million a year ago, and better than the $1.82 billion expected by the Street. Sales of the company's DRAM products increased 24% sequentially, as a result of a rise in unit sales and average selling prices. MU's revenue from NAND Flash products were down a bit thanks to a "slight decrease in average selling prices."

Today's market was described as another wishy-washy day where no directional feel was present because of fluctuations from positive to negative. The closing bell being positive or negative was something that was not certain until the end of the trading day. Unemployment rose in 30 states, but this was a January figure. The notion that February's deficit was a record hardly had any significant dent.

The unofficial closing bell levels were as follows:

Dow 10,565.67 +1.29 (0.01%)
S&P 500 1,145.57 +5.13 (0.45%)
Nasdaq 2,357.90 +17.22 (0.74%)

Top Analyst Calls

Today was one of those days that held up despite the negative tape throughout much of the day and despite another call for a crash. Washington D.C. was closed, much of New York City was closed, and the volume was frequently light enough that this might as well just be considered a throw-away day. Or a market snow-day.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 10,038.16 -20.48 (-0.20%)
S&P 500 1,068.15 -2.37 (-0.22%)
Nasdaq 2,147.18 -3.69 (-0.17%)

Top Day Trader Stocks
Top Analyst Upgrades-Downgrades

Even in a holiday shortened week so close to the end of the calendar year, there are still some earnings reports dribbling in. Question is, will any of the companies reporting quarterly results this week offer up a gift for investors?

Apropos of the season, analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters have high expectations for American Greetings Corp.'s (AM) fiscal third quarter 2010 earnings. The nation's second largest provider of greeting cards announced record second quarter results and declared a quarterly dividend during the three months that ended in November. American Greetings is expected to report that earnings rose 43.9% from a year ago to $0.66 per share. Revenue for the quarter is expected to total $445.4 million, or 1.9% lower than a year ago. So far, the full-year forecast is for its profit to more than double to $2.00 per share while revenue falls 5.6% from a year ago to $1.6 billion. This Cleveland-based company creamed earnings estimates in the past two quarters.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that BusinessWeek reported on Micron Technology Inc.'s (NASDAQ: MU) effort to diversify with an acquisition of DisplayTech, a producer of display screens such as those used as viewfinders for digital cameras. Micron, one of the largest memory chip makers in the semiconductor industry, has been reporting losses over the past two years due to steep declines in the price of computer memory.

DisplayTech has been developing a new technology called "pico projection," which can produce crisp images from small devices. This innovation could make it possible to deliver a business presentation from a BlackBerry without having to lug along a laptop and full-sized projector.

Over the last few years, commodities have been at the center of a boom-and-bust cycle not witnessed before in our lifetimes. But one commodity that missed out on the boom -- but certainly not the bust -- is the dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chip.

This key component of the personal computer became a commodity after the dot-com boom, and its seemingly unlimited supply and availability resulted in falling prices.

There has been no hedge fund craziness with this commodity to drive up prices. Nope, this poor little semiconductor chip could not attract any sort of interest on the buy side. As a result, companies that make the DRAM chip have been struggling to survive.

There's not a whole lot on the economic calendar this coming week, as Thursday is Christmas day. But things are not entirely silent either.

As this is Christmas card season, it's somehow appropriate that American Greetings Corp. (NYSE: AM) is scheduled to report fiscal third-quarter results. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect the nation's number two producer of greeting cards to report earnings of $0.52 per share, essentially the same as a year ago. Estimated revenue for the quarter is $474.5 million, down 2.3% from a year ago. American Greetings missed analysts' estimates in three of the past four quarters -- by 55.4% in the first quarter. After falling to a multiyear low of $7.85 per share in late November, the price closed Friday at $9.92. But the share price is 53.8% lower than a year ago.

Drugstore chain Walgreen Co. (NYSE: WAG), where one may find American Greetings cards, is expected to also report earnings the same as a year ago, or $0.46 per share, on revenue of $15.1 billion (+7.5%). Walgreen reported a modest increase in sales in October and again in November. The company only missed profit estimates in one of the past four quarters, and that by only a penny. The consensus recommendation remains to buy WAG, which has a long-term EPS growth rate forecast of 12.5%, better than the S&P 500 but less than that of rival CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS). Walgreen's share price has been creeping upward since reaching a multiyear low of $21.28 in October and closed Friday at $26.08. (For more on Walgreen, see Steven Mallas's earnings preview.)

The Associated Press reports that 99 year old billionaire J. R. Simplot died of natural causes after a life shunning cigarettes and alcohol. Although much of his $3.2 billion estimated net worth came from a deal he struck with McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) to supply potatoes for its french fries, he also made some money in semiconductors -- providing $1 million in capital for a 40% stake in Micron Technologies (NYSE: MU).

That Micron stake connects me -- however distantly -- to Simplot. That's because on June 22, 2006, Micron acquired Lexar Media, a maker of flash memory chips, for $850 million. I was an advisory board member of Lexar and received cash for my stake. Micron, which generates most of its revenues from Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, thought that Lexar's flash memory would help boost its margins by expanding Micron's then-developing memory card business. Unfortunately, Micron's stock has lost 22% of its value since the deal.

But Micron was not the biggest part of Simplot's fortune. He left home in 1923 with $20 worth of gold coins from his mother and traded up. His businesses, still family owned, manufacture agriculture, horticulture and turf fertilizers; animal feed and seeds; food products such as fruits, potatoes and other vegetables; and industrial chemicals and irrigation products. He all but invented the first commercially viable frozen french fries in the world.