Before the Open (Sep 28)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down – China, Hong Kong and Japan lost more than 2%.
Europe is currently mixed with a slight up bias – Germany is up 1.3%.
Futures here in the States are up a few points indicating a gap up open for the cash market. This comes after being down overnight. …

Stockcharts.com is down, so there’ll be no charts in this little write up. That’s ok because I rarely have anything to add on a Monday morning to my weekend write up.
The overall trend is up – higher highs and higher lows continue to be the pattern. But in the near term, the bulls will be tested. They stepped up and defended their turf very well the last 6 months, so it would be foolish to assume this time will be different. As far as I’m concerned, the trend is up until it’s not. This doesn’t mean I blindly hold because every big pullback starts as a small pullback. I’m just not going to get overly bearish. The only traders who can accurately pick a top are those who incorrectly picked a top several times the last 6 months. A stopped clock is correct twice a day. If they keep singing the same song, they’ll eventually be right. But will they still be in business?
There are slight warning signs in the form of the banks not making a higher high last week and oil and copper having already topped out, but the dollar and LIBOR continue to be accommodative. Be conservative here. Spotting bottoms is easy. Tops are more difficult. This is a good time to get chopped up.
That’s it for now. I’ll post more after the open assuming stockcharts.com comes back online.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
yesterday’s Sector Performance
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers
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