Before the Open (Feb 21)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hope you enjoyed your long weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets posted pretty good gains yesterday and are mostly up again today. Europe was mostly up yesterday too, but today is down across the board. Austria and Belgium are the sole 1% losers. Futures here in the States are flat relative to Friday’s close but down relative to yesterday’s action.
The dollar got hit hard yesterday and is slightly down today. Oil jumped yesterday and is off its high today. Copper was up yesterday and is getting some nice follow through today. Gold and silver are up.
I don’t have anything to add to the comments I made over the weekend in the Weekly Report. The market remains in good shape. Last Friday the Dow and Nas closed at new highs. The S&P closed at a higher high but is still below its 2011 high. The Russell small caps are lagging overall. They’re the only group to not make a higher high last week. You can’t fight the movement. The market has had a 1-track mind since the end of November – it wants to move up, and it’s going to move up no matter what’s thrown in its path. Be long or be on the sidelines. Trading books will tell you to be a contrarian. That’s a bunch of crap. Money is made riding trends, not fighting them.
The big news is Greece is getting another round of bailout money and therefore will avoid defaulting on its debt – or at least they’ll delay defaulting on their debt. The market has anticipated a bailout would take place – although it was not known what the details would be – so this news is a sigh of relief that it has finally taken place, and it also puts the focus back on the market which no longer has a positive event to look forward to.
Let’s see if the indexes can follow through from last week. Let’s see if the Russell can play catch up. Let’s also see if the breadth indicators improve. They need to or else the upside – in the near term – will be limited. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (Feb 21)”

  1. i reloaded short the dji cash equivellent at 13020 3 times over the past 2 days
    and the spx at 1370–so the cash market needs to do a bit of catching up
    but europe and the futures feel tired and in “sell the news mode”
    so is the euro
    closed my last short a few hours ago and will wait till some big bad bulls to arrive

  3. Best to be defensive some more signs of weakness / hesitation. But lots of break outs, back & fills, break out pullback bounces.
    There are still opportunities, best of luck.

  4. Congratulations Neal on dow 13000 –i beleive u said to short it
    the hedgie instos are about to destroy the long only pension funds that were conned by the central banks
    the greak deal kills the private investor and is non sence
    many bear divergences and dont bet on the buy the dips–the hedgie instos have taken the opposite side to those retailer bull types
    i need some more bull as i just covered my shorts,but if dips dont get bought then my game plan changes as the character of the market changes

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