Today was a quiet economic day yet stocks managed to find some footing despite two miserable selling sessions in the last two trading days. Gold hit a record close as investors continue to look for safe havens, and that is also keeping a lid on bond yields in Treasuries.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,939.23 +122.74 (1.25%)
S&P 500 1,062.02 +11.55 (1.10%)
Nasdaq 2,170.57 -3.33 (-0.15%)

Top Analyst Calls

This morning, Rochdale upgraded Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), raising the retail giant to Buy from Hold. The brokerage also upped its price target on the retailer to $65 per share from $55. Rochdale stated that the retailer has a "favorable blend of defensive qualities," including consumers trading down, the company's focus on low costs, cyclical upside from more discretionary general merchandise and international exposure.

Fundamentally, WMT is in a good position thanks to its combination of merchandise and price. However, the company's technical performance suggests that Rochdale may be a little late to the dance. On a weekly basis, WMT has set a descending pattern of lower highs dating back to late last year. This pattern suggests technical weakness, and we could see the pattern continue this week. If WMT can not capitalize on last week's momentum, the shares could confirm this pattern.

Despite good news from Wall Street analysts today: Rochdale Securities upgraded eBay to buy from hold with a $35 target price, and RBC initiated coverage at hold, with the same price target, eBay slipped nearly 1.5% today to close at $30.28.

Concerns are mounting among investors especially after a local research firm in Taipei released its data.  The analyst claims eBay has been losing ground in China to one of its competitors, especially in the C2C (consumer to consumer) sales.

Somewhat different were the words of Martin Wu, chief executive at eBay China.  He claimed only a few weeks ago that revenue increased more than 10 per cent in the first quarter and that revenue of its competitor Taobao, remained unchanged.

The attempt to consolidate the difference between the analyst's data and the chairman data were unfruitful.

eBay was the leader in the Chinese auction market but in January had to drop transaction fees from basic C2C services.  This is due to the introduction of a free auction service by rival Taobao in 2004 that caused a massive flight of consumers in its direction.

But have no fear, Forbes has just published an article saying that in the event of a bird flu pandemic, eBay should do well.  Here's something to hope for.