Before the Open (Aug 2)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up – there were several 1% winners. Europe is posting solid, across-the-board gains. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap up for the cash market that will open the indexes within several S&P points from last week’s high.
I don’t think I need to repeat much of what I stated over the weekend. Since the big up day on July 20 my bias has been to the upside. Last week tested us, but considering the selling started in the area of the June high and after the market had rallied 5 of 6 days, it wasn’t a surprise and as long as the selling wasn’t extremely intense, I saw no reason to change my bias.
Here’s the S&P 30-min I’ve been working off of. The index traded through trendline resistance and 1100 but didn’t follow through much…then it dropped back to test the top side of the trendline and today it’ll open somewhere above 1100 (unless Bernanke rocks the market when he speaks at 9:15 EST).

More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers