Before the Open (Oct 30)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a lean to the upside. India, New Zealand, Taiwan and the Philippines did well; China and Hong Kong dropped. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently mostly up. Poland, Turkey, Kenya, Hungary, Spain and Portugal are leading the way. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.
The conclusion from LB Weekly, published over the weekend, was that the market was in great shape overall but the near term was much less certain. Many breadth indicators are diverging from the price action.
The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down small amounts. Bonds are up.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Macy’s (M -7.73%) is down over 2% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup with a price target of $16.
J.C. Penney (JCP -14.75%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup with a price target of $1.50.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -1.33%) is down 3% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Equal-Weight’ at Morgan Stanley with a price target of $8.
Praxair (PX -0.98%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup with a price target of $168.
Intel (INTC +7.38%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at BMO Capital Markets with a price target of $58.
General Motors (GM -1.35%) was downgraded to ‘Sell from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
Piper Jaffray (PJC +1.61%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods with a price target of $78.
Office Depot (ODP -0.27%) was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JP Morgan Chase.
Leggett & Platt (LEG +2.53%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Piper Jaffray with a price target of $46.
Bristol-Meyers Squibb (BMY -1.66%) rose over 1% in after-hours trading after competitor Merck withdrew its European application for KEYTRUDA in combination with pemetrexed and carboplatin as a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. Merck MRK fell nearly 3% in after-hours trading on the news.
La Jolla Pharmaceuticals (LJPC +7.42%) filed a $150 million mixed securities shelf.
Century Aluminum (CENX -0.26%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JP Morgan Chase with a price target of $14.50.
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Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Personal Income and Outlays
10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
3:00 Farm Prices
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY