(By Rich Bieglmeier) It was a good day on Wall Street. Equity indexes managed to tack on more than one percent because Greek polls indicate the citizens want to remain in the Euro. Meanwhile, the most recent voting brought vehement anti-bailout neo-Nazis and socialist into greater power. Things that make you go hmm.
While the market magicians show off the shiny, new Greek polls, investors better not lose sight of the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs in Spain. Egan-Jones downgraded Spain's credit rating deep into junk territory as they are worried about the country's "financial stability."
Greece would look like aftershocks compared to the 8.9 er and tsunami that would follow a tectonic shift from the world's 12th largest economy. Spain is nearly five times the size of Greece GDP wise.
At home, lousy consumer confidence resulted in talk of more stimuli. The folks are starting to feel uneasy about their job situation according to the poll. With more than 88 million not participating in the workforce, it's no wonder many are concerned. Consumer confidence is something to pay close attention to; Adam Smith's hand gripping the wallet a little tighter would be a setback for the fragile recovery.
The string of underwhelming economic reports and moderating inflation has the market talking heads hopeful that more stimuli may be on the way. Thursday's and Friday's major releases could add more chatter to the rumor mill.
Despite the array of mostly unwelcome news, the indexes appear ready to challenge their breakdown points, 2900 for the NASDAQ, 12,700 for the Dow, and 1340 for the S&P. Those areas should be difficult to break on the first attempt. What was hard on the way down should be hard on the way up. 
The number of S&P companies reporting earnings barely budged from the prior week. Instead of focusing on the index as a whole, iStock ran the numbers for as reported earnings by sector.
INDEX NAME | YoY As Reported EPS Growth |
S&P 500 Industrials | 16.70% |
S&P 500 Financials | 10.28% |
S&P 500 Information Technology | 10.10% |
S&P 500 Energy | 9.24% |
S&P 500 Health Care | 9.04% |
S&P 500 | 5.92% |
S&P 500 Telecommunication Services | -2.79% |
S&P 500 Consumer Staples | -2.97% |
S&P 500 Consumer Discretionary | -4.09% |
S&P 500 Utilities | -17.67% |
S&P 500 Materials | -17.81% |
iStock would focus on the sectors with the strongest earnings growth to find investable candidates. As it has been said countless times, rising earnings are the mother's milk of winning stock picks.