Before the Open (Apr 24)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan, India and Indonesia rallied more than 1%; China was weak. Europe is posting massive, across-the-board gains. France is up more than 4%; Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium more than 3%; Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Sweden more than 2%; most other markets are up 1% or more. Futures in the States are up huge.
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VIDEO: The Trend is Your Friend
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The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are getting hit hard. Bonds are down a bunch.
It’s all about France coming out of the weekend. They had their presidential election, and although it’s not decided who will win (the top two candidates will do a run-off on May 7), it’s likely the pro-EU candidate will beat the anti-EU candidate. This has caused the Asian/Pacific markets to mostly post solid gains and Europe to posted its biggest 1-day gains in a long time. I can’t remember the last time there were so many markets up 2, 3 and 4%.
S&P 500 futures are up 30 – can’t remember the last time I saw that.
The indexes have been stuck in a rut for a few months. I can’t even say rallies have gotten sold and dips have gotten bought because there have been virtually no directional moves within the ranges.
Many groups are in the same boat – they’re unchanged going back a couple months.
The indicators are mixed – some would be supportive of a rally attempt, others would not.
Can the news out of France begin a directional move? We’ll see. In the weekly report published over the weekend, I laid out what needs to take place for a rally attempt to sustain itself.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Travelers (TRV +0.19%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Argus with a price target of $132.
Knight Transportation (KNX +1.64%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS with a price target of $43.
Stanley Black & Decker (SWK +3.65%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JP Morgan Chase with a price target of $152.
U.S. Steel (X -0.29%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Macquarie.
Walt Disney (DIS -0.30%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Loop Capital Markets.
Groupon (GRPN -0.51%) lost nearly 1% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley who cited “lackluster” advertiser demand in North America.
Park National (PRK +0.27%) reported Q1 EPS of $1.31, below consensus of $1.33.
Community Trust Bancorp (CTBI +1.04%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Hilliard Lyons
XOMA Corp (XOMA +3.48%) sank 11% in after-hours trading after Novo-Nordisk said it was terminating its exclusive licensing agreement with XOMA due to strategic and business reasons.
Nexvet Biopharma (NVET unch) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse.
EyeGate Pharmaceuticals (EYEG -1.42%) dropped 6% in after-hours trading after it filed an S-1 to sell up to $11.5 million of shares.
Thursday’s Key Earnings
Blackstone (NYSE:BX) +0.5% after topping expectations.
Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) -6.8% AH whacked by inventory issues.
Philip Morris (NYSE:PM) -3.5% on an earnings miss.
Verizon (NYSE:VZ) -1.1% losing core subscribers.
Visa (NYSE:V) +2.1% AH boosted by Europe unit, buybacks.
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
11:30 Fed’s Kashkari speech
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY