TODAY'S PRIMER

Wall Street bulls have a plethora of impressive numbers to admire ahead of the Thursday session on Wall Street with the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq coming off fresh multi-year highs. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 had their biggest percentage gains Wednesday since early March, and more than 25% of the S&P 500 chalked up new 52-week highs. The Dow is now 70% above the March 2009 lows, the S&P 500 79% higher, and the Nasdaq Composite has nearly doubled, registering a 97.4% gain since that date. All told, the major averages have advanced for five straight sessions. Skeptics, however, would point out that the S&P 500's move above 1,200, which was noted as a key milestone yesterday, comes about 12 years after it first happened.
Economic numbers are likely to have a major influence over whether that bullish streak continues. The Labor Department will release the weekly jobless claims numbers at 8:30am ET, with economists looking for that number to drop to 445,000 from last week's reading of 460,000. At 9:15am ET, the Federal Reserve has March numbers for industrial production and factory capacity utilization. Industrial production is seen increasing by 0.8% after February's rise of 0.1%, and capacity utilization should increase to 73.3% from the prior month's reading of 72.7%.
At 10am ET, the widely followed Philadelphia Fed Index will be out, with consensus forecasts calling for a rise in April to 19.5 from March's 18.9. And at 1pm ET, we may see a rise in the National Association of Home Builders sentiment index to 16, which would be up one point from last month.
Fed speakers are prominent once again today, with speeches scheduled from Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, and San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen, with all but Yellen's speech taking place during the trading day. CNBC's Steve Liesman will have an exclusive interview with Lacker at 2pm ET.
Yum Brands (YUM) is a stock to watch today, after the restaurant operator exceeded Wall Street forecasts with its latest earnings report. We'll also watch Dow component Hewlett-Packard after the Wall Street Journal reported that German and Russian officials are investigating whether HP paid millions in bribes to win a contract in Russia.
The day's most prominent earnings report will come after the closing bell, when we'll get the latest quarterly numbers from Google (GOOG).
UPS (UPS) is also a stock to watch today, as it preannounced fiscal first quarter earnings that exceeded Street estimates and raised its outlook for the year.