Stocks open strongly

Stocks opened strongly this morning, possibly laying the groundwork for an end-of-the-year Santa Claus rally.

In the first 15 minutes of trading, the Dow is up nine-tenths of 1 percent.

The broader S&P 500 is up eight-tenths of 1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up nearly nine-tenths of 1 percent.

New jobless claims filed last week unexpectedly rose, though Wall Street appears to be shrugging off that news.

A note: Aol began trading this morning as its own company, once again, spun off from Time Warner. You will recall that then-AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000 in a tie-up that was hailed as the first new-media/old-media merger of the 21st century. A decade later, Aol's spinoff confirms that the merger never worked out. (As part of its spinoff, AOL changed its corporate name and logo to Aol, by the way.)

In early trading on the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Aol are trading down.

-- Frank Ahrens
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