Before the Open (May 1)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Japan and Australia moved up; Hong Kong, South Korea, India and Indonesia moved down. Europe is also mixed. Turkey, Greece, Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic are up; the UK and Finland are down. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
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VIDEO: There’s a Bull Market Somewhere
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The dollar is flat. Oil is down; copper is up. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are down.
Big news week this week. Lots of earnings report. FOMC Wednesday. Employment data Friday.
We’ve gotten some big earnings-related gaps, so you’re rolling the dice holding into a report.
The market’s long term trend is solidly up and not showing signs of weakening. Even if a top was being put in place (no evidence of this), it would be months before the market actually headed south because tops take time to form.
The market’s short term trend is trying to re-assert to the upside. The indexes have been mostly range bound the last 2-4 months. The Nas has clearly broken out. The Russell 2000 moved to a new high last week but then fell back down on Friday. The other indexes are near the tops of their ranges.
Bias is clearly up. No reason to be anything but long. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Dunkin’ Brands Group (DNKN -1.06%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Sector Perform’ at RBC Capital Markets with a target price of $64.
Autodesk (ADSK -0.62%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley with a price target of $115.
L3 Technologies (LLL -1.25%) was downgraded to ‘Equal-Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays.
Thompson Reuters (TRI +3.70%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Canaccord Genuity.
Apartment Investment (AIV -1.60%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Mizuho Securities USA.
First Solar (FSLR +0.37%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Credit Suisse.
Discover Financial Services (DFS -2.69%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank.
Synchrony (SYF -15.89%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Costamare (CMRE -3.44%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Credit Suisse.
Atlantic Capital Bancshares (ACBI +0.77%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.
Wesco Aircraft (WAIR -2.41%) reported Q2 preliminary net sales of $364.6 million, below consensus of $377.2 million.
TFS Financial (TFSL -1.14%) reported Q2 EPS of 8 cents, better than consensus of 7 cents.
Genworth Financial (GNW -1.46%) fell 3% in after-hours trading after it said it needs more time to convince regulators they should approve the company’s plan to sell itself to China Oceanwide Holdings Group.
Today’s Economic Calendar
Auto Sales
8:30 Personal Income and Outlays
9:45 PMI Manufacturing Index
10:00 ISM Manufacturing Index
10:00 Construction Spending
2:00 PM Gallup US Consumer Spending Measure
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY