Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Indonesia and Singapore all did well. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently mostly up. The UAE, Greece, Denmark, South Africa, Russia, Belgium and Portugal are doing the best. Israel is down. Futures in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
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The dollar is up. Bitcoin is down. Oil is up; copper is flat. Gold and silver are down small amounts. Bonds are up.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
GrubHub (GRUB +1.52%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wedbush.
Caterpillar (CAT +1.58%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan Chase with a price target of $200.
Hyatt Hotels (H -2.22%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Raymond James with a 12-month target price of $82.
Electronic Arts (EA +4.85%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at BMO Capital Markets with a price target of $130.
Citrix Systems (CTXS +0.86%) was downgraded to ‘Equal-Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays.
Essent Group Ltd (ESNT +1.01%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $61.
Radian Group (RDN +0.58%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $28.
Stifel Financial (SF +2.69%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs with a price target of $77.
Qualcomm (QCOM +0.67%) confirmed that its processors are affected by the chip vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre.
Air Lease (AL +1.02%) said it “expects the overall net impact of the Tax Act to be favorable” and it expects revaluation to result in 40% reduction in its deferred tax liability.
On Assignment (ASGN +1.65%) said it sees a 58 cents to 64 cents a share income tax benefit from the new U.S. tax law as it raised its Q4 adjusted EPS estimate to $1.32-$1.41 from a prior view of 74 cents-77 cents.
Atlantic Investment said it cut its stake in Diebold Nixdorf (DBD +2.66%) to 6.8% from a 9.0% stake reported Nov 15.
Boston Omaha (BOMN -6.78%) jumped 7% in after-hours trading after it announced a recent $10 million equity investment in Dream Finders Holdings LLC.
Today’s Economic Calendar
Fed’s Rosengren speech
12:30 PM TD Ameritrade IMX
12:40 PM Fed’s Bostic Speech
1:35 PM Fed’s Williams:Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy
3:00 PM Consumer Credit
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY