Before the Open (Aug 23)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed – there were no standout winners or losers. Europe is currently up across the board – France and London are up ~ 1%. Futures here in the States point toward a moderate gap up open for the cash market. This comes off a day the market registered a new 4-week low Friday but then rallied to close near its intraday high.
There are lots of things going against the market…key groups such as banks, semis and oil have been weak…small caps have been weak…volume has been stronger on down days than up days…August is not historical a strong month and Sept is even weaker…the market has tended to be weak after options expire…the US dollar is moving up. It would be a huge victory for the bulls just to hold the market is a sideways consolidation pattern. Here’s the S&P chart I posted last week showing that other than a couple brief moves below 1060, the market has been range bound for four months.

My near term bias leans slightly to the upside, but this could change fast if today is a weak day.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers