Before the Open (Dec 17)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. India, Australia and Singapore did well; Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia were weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently mostly down. Russia and Saudi Arabia are up; Denmark, Poland, France, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Austria and Sweden are weak. Futures in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
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List of Indexes and ETFs – here
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The dollar is down. Oil is up; copper is down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are up.
Overnight Stock Movers from barchart.com…
Best Buy (BBY -1.00%) is down 4% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
Illinois Tool Works (ITW -1.65%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $125.
Lululemon Athletica (LULU -0.90%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Stifel with a price target of $151.
Sherwin-Williams (SHW +0.03%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral” at JPMorgan Chase with a price target of $415.
Skechers (SKX -2.59%) was rated a new ‘Buy’ at Stifel with a price target of $32.
LyondellBasell (LYB -1.60%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $95.
TE Connectivity Ltd (TEL -0.79%) may open higher initially this morning after its board added $1.5 billion to its share repurchase program and recommended the annual dividend rate be increased by about 4.5%.
Raytheon (RTN -1.50%) may open higher initially this morning after it reported that it had won a $149.4 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the engineering, manufacturing and development of the Standard Missle-2 Block IIIC.
Yangtze River Port & Logistics Ltd (YRIV -7.69%) jumped 13% in after-hours trading on signs of insider buying after CEO Liu reported to the SEC that he bought $1.7 million in shares of the company’s stock.
Anworth Mortgage Asset (ANH +1.34%) may open lower initially this morning after it unexpectedly cut its quarterly dividend to 13 cents a share from 14 cents a share.
Catalyst Pharmaceuticals (CPRX -4.88%) rose 3% in after-hours trading on signs of insider buying after company Director O’Keefe reported a purchase of 20,000 shares of the company’s stock.
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Empire State Mfg Survey
10:00 NAHB Housing Market Index
4:00 PM Treasury International Capital
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings from Morningstar
this week’s Economic Numbers/Reports powered by ECONODAY