Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Happy New Years.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand did the best; Malaysia dropped. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are split. Turkey, the UAE, Greee and Portugal are up while the UK, Poland, France and Germany are down. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
The dollar is down. Bitcoin is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are down.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Disney (DIS -0.24%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Macquarie with a price target of $125.
Netflix (NFLX -0.39%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Macquarie with a price target of $220.
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ -0.60%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JP Morgan Chase.
Abbott Laboratories (ABT -0.68%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal-Weight’ at Morgan Stanley with a price target of $67.
L Brands (LB -1.31%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Baird with a price target of $70.
International Paper (IP +0.19%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch with a price target of $66.
Allstate (ALL -0.19%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods with a price target of $93.
Genesco (GCO unch) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Jeffries.
Lennar (LEN -0.91%) may move higher this morning after GAMCO reported a 11.76% stake in the company after the close of trading on Friday.
RCI Hospitality (RICK -1.89%) said it sees preliminary Q4 revenue of $39.2 million, better than consensus of $38.1 million, but said it needs more time to file a 10-K to resolve two non-cash accounting issues.
vTv Therapeutics (VTVT +8.09%) rallied nearly 6% in after-hours trading after it rallied 45% on Thursday and Friday when shareholder Ron Perelman, who owns more than 10% of the company, reported that he bought an additional 50,000 shares of the company’s common stock at an average price of $4.03 on December 26.
Xunlei Ltd (XNET +5.05%) rose almost 3% in after-hours trading after Morgan Stanley reported a 5.1% passive stake in the company.
Vintage Capital raised its stake in Vitamin Shoppe (VSI +1.15%) to 12.4% from 9.9% reported Dec 15.
New York REIT (NYRT -0.51%) may move higher this morning after Davidson Kempner reported a new 7.1% passive stake in the company after the close of trading on Friday.
Kadmon Holdings (KDMN +4.02%) fell 3% in after-hours trading after it filed to sell a $150 million mixed securities shelf.
Today’s Economic Calendar
9:45 PMI Manufacturing Index
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY
One thought on “Before the Open (Jan 2)”
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We have, no way of knowing what part of the prices we’re currently seeing for assets is attributable to the improving macro/fundamental backdrop and what part is attributable to the ongoing distortion of the supply/demand curve created by central bank flows.
What the charts suggest is that we’re about to move back in the direction of real price discovery. That’s something we haven’t had in a long, long time. We stare at 2018 knowing that money is required to move the markets. Will it be Fed money or earnings? Be careful out there, long ways to go before we know more…. maybe a happy new year?