Stock Futures Rise on Strong Apple Results

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- U.S. stock futures were pointing higher early Wednesday after Apple(AAPL) far exceeded Wall Street's expectations in its latest quarter, selling more than 35 million iPhones.

The news was setting an optimistic tone for trading ahead of the Federal Reserve's upcoming policy announcement, which is due at 12:30 p.m. ET. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will meet the press after the announcement, adding to the drama of the day.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up by 35 points, or 51.4 points above fair value, at 12,994. Futures for the S&P 500 were 8.1 points higher, or 10.5 points above fair value, at 1378, and futures for the Nasdaq were ahead by 50.5 points, or 48.7 points above fair value, at 2683.

Futures hardly reacted to a weak report on durable goods orders in March. The Commerce Department said orders fell 4.2% last month following a downwardly-revised gain of 1.9% in February. The reading was the biggest decline in durable goods orders since January 2009 and much worse than the 1.7% decline expected by economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Excluding the transportation component, orders were down 1.1%.

"We simply do not believe the weakness indicated by durable goods orders -- ISM new orders averaged 55.7 in the first quarter (the strongest since the second quarter of 2011) versus 54.4 in the fourth quarter, Fed data show durable goods manufactured production up 15.6% in the first quarter (the second strongest reading in 14 years) versus 9.1% in the fourth quarter, and hours worked for durable goods factory production workers rose 8.7% in the first quarter (the second strongest reading in almost 18 years) versus 4.3% in the fourth quarter," said RDQ Economics following the data.