Before the Open (Jun 19)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with solid gains. China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, and the Philippines all did very well. Europe is currently doing very well too. Poland, France, Turkey, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Norway, Hungary, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and the Czech Republic are all doing great. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are up.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Amazon.com (AMZN +2.44%) gained 1% in pre-market trading after a person familiar with the matter said Amazon plans to cut prices and jobs at Whole Foods Market to make the store competitive with Wal-Mart Stores.
Broadcom Ltd (AVGO -0.73%) fell 3% in pre-market trading after Nikkan Kogyo reported that Toshiba is in the final stages of selecting a rival bid of Broadcom’s for the sale of its semiconductor division.
Costco Wholesale (COST -7.19%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank.
Biogen (BIIB -1.29%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Sell’ at UBS with a price target of $270.
Nucor (NUE +0.59%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Longbow Research with a 12-month target price of $66.
U.S. Steel (X -1.03%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Longbow Research with a 12-month target price of $30.
Kroger (KR -9.24%) was downgraded to ‘Equal-Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Travelers (TRV +0.33%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
Cisco’s (CSCO +0.16%) senior vice president and chief of operations, Rebecca Jacoby, sold 92,840 shares of the company’s stock at an average price of $31.71 on June 14.
Huntington Ingalls (HII -4.90%) received a $3.01 billion modification from the U.S. Department of Defense to a previously awarded contract for the procurement of the detail, design, and construction of Landing Helicopter Assault Replacement Flight 1 Amphibious Assault Ship (LHA-8).
Six Flags Entertainment (SIX -0.20%) filed an 8.5 million share shelf for holder H Partners Management LLC.
Bandera Partners boosted its stake in Famous Dave’s of America (DAVE -1.41%) to 15.6% from 12% reported in March.
Today’s Economic Calendar
7:00 PM Fed’s Evans: Monetary Policy
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY