Before the Open (Feb 27)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down, but losses were minimal. Japan, China and South Korea fell the most. Europe currently leans to the downside. Russia is down more than 1%; Austria, Portugal and Sweden are also weak. Hungary and Italy are doing well. Futures in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
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The dollar is flat. Oil is up; copper is flat. Gold is down; silver is up. Bonds are down.
The S&P rallied 4 of 5 days last week, and all the indexes registered all-time highs. There is no arguing the primary trend is up, but in the near term more cracks are showing.
Utilities are now leading – not a characteristic of an up-trending market. And some indicators, although at healthy levels, are starting to put in negative divergences.
I’m fully on board with the long term trend remaining in place, but I’m less confident when only looking out a couple weeks.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Reynolds American (RAI -0.08%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wells Fargo Securities.
Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL +0.20%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Argus with a price target of $64.
Tesla (TSLA +0.39%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs with a price target of $185.
Sina Corp China (SINA +4.35%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Accumulate’ at GuoTai JunAn with a target price of $74.
Illumina (ILMN -0.63%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Evercore ISI with a price target of $190.
Hanesbrands (HBI +2.20%) was downgraded to ‘Equal-Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Terex (TEX +1.47%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
Urban Outfitters (URBN +2.21%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at MKM Partners.
Merck (MRK +0.47%) said its V212 investigational inactivated varicella zoster virus for prevention of shingles met its primary endpoint in a Phase 3 shingles study.
Raytheon (RTN +0.12%) gained nearly 1% in after-hours trading after it received a $1.07 billion contract from the U.S. Air Force.
Earthlink (ELNK -3.76%) climbed over 3% in after-hours trading after it disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders approved an agreement and plan of merger with Windstream.
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Durable Goods
10:00 Pending Home Sales
10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey

Other
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY

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