Stocks surged this morning on some positive earnings report in what will be a busy week in that area. Dow components IBM IBM and Coca-Cola gained over 2.5% and 2.8% after reporting better-than-expected quarterly numbers, alleviating some concern over how bad corporate earnings might have been during the lockdown quarter in the U.S. Sentiment also got a boost on Tuesday after the European Commission, which is the EU's executive branch, agreed to a 750-billion-euro stimulus package, much quicker than expected given the political maneuvering that was needed there. Designed to help the most affected countries in the region, the stimulus was well received by financial markets. In the US, lawmakers are going to face pressure to pass legislation by the end of July to pass their own stimulus, set to expire. Gold seems to be benefitting from all the fiat currency printing, gaining over 1% and nearing all-time highs.

All shoppers are familiar with the offer of a discount at checkout in exchange for taking out a store credit card. Their wallets may already be stuffed with plastic bearing the names of retailers including Amazon.com, Gap, JCPenney, and Lowe's, but there's often one company behind all of them: Synchrony Financial in Stamford, Connecticut, which is one of the world's largest issuers of store credit cards. This summer marks five years since it spun off from its parent company -- General Electric -- and ever since it's been building a digital strategy that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning. Synchrony now deploys AI to speed up everything including credit approvals and fraud detection. Chief Information Officer Carol Juel has led the undertaking.

Plus, it's not just for data analysts -- machine learning has real benefits in the lives of the average consumer. Ever wonder how Netflix serves up recommendations for the next movie or how your smartphone knows that you will be driving to work on Monday morning? Those are both examples of machine learning. How is machine learning different from ordinary analytics? With traditional methods, an analyst defines the objective and looks for correlations between the objective and a defined set of data inputs.