Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a lean to the upside. South Korea jumped 1.5%; Hong Kong, India and New Zealand also did well. China was weak. Europe is currently mixed and little changed. Russia is down 0.8%; Belgium, Poland and Spain are also down. Many markets are up, but none are up more than about 0.3%. Futures in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
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The dollar is up. Oil and copper are up. Gold is up; silver is down. Bonds are up.
The Nas and Nas 100 are trending up (6-day winning streaks); the other indexes are stuck in ranges.
The AD line and AD volume line have been lacking lately. Single data points don’t mean much, but it’s still something to keep an eye on.
The market seems to be waiting for something. There’s little interest in Dow 20K. Volume has been light going back to the middle of December. New highs are lacking. It’s good the market has held up, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest in pushing it higher. Considering the run off the pre-election low, a longer rest is certainly acceptable.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
JPMorgan Chase (JPM +0.29%) was rated a new ‘Buy’ at UBS with a price target of $98.
salesforce.com (CRM +0.03%) and Microsoft (MSFT -0.03%) were both rated ‘Outperform’ at Wells Fargo Securities.
Juniper Networks (JNPR +0.04%) fell over 2% in pre-market trading after the stock was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
Citigroup (C +0.02%) was rated a new ‘Sell’ at UB with a price target of $58.
Torchmark (TMK +0.14%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Hold’ at Evercore ISI with a 12-month target price of $70.
United Continental Holdings (UAL +3.34%) climbed almost 3% in after-hours trading after it reported its December load factor improved 10 bps to 83.1% and that revenue passenger miles in December rose +2.6%.
Merck (MRK -1.93%) rose 4% in after-hours trading after the U.S. FDA granted priority review for its supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for Keytruda, plus chemotherapy, as primary treatment of patients with advanced lung cancer.
Achaogen (AKAO +3.14%) rallied 7% in after-hours trading after Baker Brothers raised their passive stake in the company from less than 1% to 13.1%.
Parsley Energy (PE +2.54%) fell 4% in after-hours trading after it announced a public offering of 20 million shares of Class A common stock.
MagnaChip Semiconductor (MX +4.10%) gained almost 1% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 preliminary revenue of $180 million, higher than consensus of $177 million.
Ichor Holdings Ltd (ICHR -4.29%) jumped 8% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 preliminary sales of $131 million, above consensus of $118 million.
Veeco Instruments (VECO +1.89%) slid 3% in after-hours trading after it announced a public offering of $200 million convertible senior notes due 2023.
Bluerock Residential Growth REIT (BRG -0.07%) dropped 4% in after-hours trading after it announced a public offering of 4 million shares of Class A common stock.
Today’s Economic Calendar
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
10:00 Atlanta Fed’s Business Inflation Expectations
10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
1:00 PM Results of $20B, 10-Year Note Auction
1:20 PM Fed’s Dudley Speech
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY