The markets opened higher this morning with data coming from the Government suggesting the economy's on the improve. The S&P continues to lead making another new multi-year high with the index's biggest names taking charge. Technology and financials are experiencing the benefit of today's sharp move higher, as data revealed the number of jobless Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to a five-year low last week, while initiation of new homes being built increased to their fastest pace in four years last month. Weekly unemployment benefit applications fell 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 335,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the lowest level since January 2008, just after the recession began. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, fell to 359,250. However, the applications data can be uneven in January. Job cuts typically spike in the second week of the month as retailers, restaurants and other companies lay off temporary workers hired for the winter holidays. Since economists often suggest strength in housing and labor markets are few of the most key components toward sustained growth and higher corporate profits. Job market improvement helps stimulate consumer spending while a recovery in housing means more purchases of appliances, furniture and other household goods as well as a source of employment. "The real estate numbers all look good, sales looked good, prices looked good, housing starts looked good," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco. Earnings Picture Reveals Promise Since financials often reveal the strength of the economic system here at home, we're two for three with the big banks reporting so far this earnings season. Although Wells Fargo (WFC) and JP Morgan (JPM) provided investors with some confidence over the last week, Bank of America says its fourth-quarter earnings shrank as it cleaned up old problems from its mortgage unit. The bank made $367 million in the last three months of 2012 after paying preferred dividends, down from $1.6 billion in the same period a year ago. The earnings were equivalent to 3 cents per share. The bank had warned that it expected earnings to be only "modestly positive." It took big charges related to a settlement with the government-backed mortgage lender Fannie Mae and a separate agreement in which it and other banks settled government accusations of wrongful foreclosure practices. Earnings still, however, were slightly better than the 2 cents per share estimates financial analysts had provided. On a much more positive note, EBay's (EBAY) fourth quarter revenue rose 19% providing shareholders of the NASDAQ mega-cap with something serious to cheer about. For a Company of EBay's size to post quarterly growth like that is nothing short of impressive. The stock has been nicely rewarded today up over 2% on the heels of last night's announcement. The company reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2012 increased 18% to $4.0 billion, compared to the same period of 2011. The company also reported fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $751 million, or $0.57 per diluted share, and net income on a non-GAAP basis of $927 million, or $0.70 per diluted share. The increase in non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven by double digit user growth across the portfolio, strong gains in mobile adoption, and accelerating growth in the company's Marketplaces business, reflecting a 19% increase in U.S. gross merchandise volume (GMV), excluding vehicles. "We had a great finish to an excellent year, with fourth quarter results exceeding our expectations," said John Donahoe, eBay, Inc. President and CEO. "eBay Marketplaces in particular had a terrific fourth quarter, with growth in the U.S. accelerating three points, outpacing ecommerce." With this morning's Government data and EBay's impressive fourth quarter numbers, it seemed enough to take the markets higher today. Small Cappers Cheering on Resurgence of Small Stocks Long time penny stock guru, Larry Isen, from the OTC Journal published a newsletter edition yesterday suggesting small stocks are finally coming back after taking a back seat to large caps ever since 2009. Isen wrote in his newsletter yesterday, "The large cap indexes have traded very well of late, but small stocks have been left behind. This suggest the world is risk averse- everyone's just been buying dividend stocks instead of sitting in cash. However, early this week there was a breakout in the Russell 2000- it's the best break out I've seen since 2009. The big surge you see in the Russell 2000 chart happened early this week- the bellwether index for small stocks broke out above its September high. At long last, small stocks are back in vogue after a brutal beating in the second half of 2012. And, penny stocks are now breaking out as well." If you're interested in small speculative penny stocks, visit: www.otcjournal.com. SCN Community Contributor, John Udovich, published an interesting edition on his take of small cap Shutterfly (SFLY) potentially offering more value than shares of Facebook (FB) right now. Udovich explains, "More evidence is emerging that social media site Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) may have peaked in USA - all the more reason for investors to either look for the exists or find stocks that could have more staying power like photo sharing site Shutterfly (NASDAQ: SFLY) or LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE: LNKD). Specifically, new data from social media tracking company SocialBakers showed that some 1.4 million Americans have abandoned Facebook in early (no word on whether these are real of fake Facebook users)." Click here for the complete story or go to: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/Small-Cap-Shutterfly-SFLY-More-Staying-Power-Than-Facebook-FB/s/via/3414/article/view/p/mid/1/id/1152/. CRAY Keeps On Running Last summer, the SmallCap Network Elite Opportunity (SCN EO) Team identified CRAY, Inc., (CRAY) as a grossly undervalued Company offering tremendous upside for investors. Sure enough, shares of CRAY are up over 43% since they suggested the idea last summer and popped over 7% in the last two trading days as the Company announced it has been awarded a $23 million dollar contract to provide two Cray XC30 supercomputers and two Cray Sonexion 1600 storage systems to Germany's National Meteorological Service -- the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Located in Offenbach, Germany, DWD is one of the world's premier numerical weather prediction centers. SCN EO focuses on providing its Members with a balanced portfolio of not only low risk high potential return large cap ideas, but more importantly uncovers early opportunities in the small cap space that can ultimately expose investors to the type of monster returns typically only found in small cap names. If you haven't yet decided to learn more about everything the SCN EO Team is providing its Members, I strongly urge you to check it out and consider this premium service... Click Here to Learn More and Sign-Up Or, copy and paste the following link in your browser: http://www.smallcapnetwork.com/pages/SCNEO/v1/.