Before the Open (Oct 9)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and the Philippines did well; Hong Kong was weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East lean to the upside. Poland, Greece, South Africa and Spain are up; Turkey is down 3%, and Saudi Arabia is also weak. Futures in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
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The dollar is down. Oil and copper are flat. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are up.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
E*TRADE Financial (ETFC -2.36%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch with a price target of $49.
Yelp (YELP +0.73%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Morgan Stanley (MS +0.26%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse with a price target of $54.
Activision Blizzard (ATVI +0.25%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Cowen.
Humana (HUM +0.63%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JP Morgan Chase.
Goldman Sachs (GS -0.02%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse.
Express Scripts Holdings (ESRX -2.58%) may open lower this morning after it was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Raymond James.
Viacom (VIA -0.98%) slid over 3% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup who said that Viacom faces the “acute” risk that Charter Communications will stop carrying its content.
Tesla (TSLA +0.44%) fell -0.5% in after-hours trading after CEO Musk tweeted that that the unveiling of its semi-truck would be pushed back to Nov 16 from Oct 26 as the company diverts resources to fix Model 3 bottlenecks and increase battery production for Puerto Rico.
Medtronic Plc (MDT +0.38%) fell 2% in after-hours trading when it said that its Q2 quarterly revenue and earnings would be hurt by $250 million from the impact of Hurricane Maria.
Pershing Square said it cut its stake in Mondelez (MDLZ +0.07%) to 4.97% from a 5.60% stake reported on Sep 27.
Morgan Stanley cut its passive stake in Blue Apron (APRN -1.32%) to 1.4% from a 5.31% stake reported in Aug 2.
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Thursday’s Key Earnings
Thursday’s Key Earnings
Costco (NASDAQ:COST) -2.5% AH on Q4 earnings.
Yum China (NYSE:YUMC) +3.1% AH on Q3 revenue growth, declaring first dividend.
Helen of Troy Limited (NASDAQ:HELE) -2.4% AH despite Q2 earnings beat.
Today’s Economic Calendar
12:30 PM TD Ameritrade IMX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY