Before the Open (Feb 24)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed and with a positive slant. China rallied 1.3%; Indonesia dropped 1.6%. Europe is currently trading mostly up. Austria is up 2.5%. Futures here in the States point towards a slight positive open for the cash market.
The dollar continues to move down. Oil and copper are up small amounts. Gold and silver are flat.
The indexes put in very nice candles yesterday…first took out the previous day’s low, then rallied to close at the highs. For the week the indexes are posting small gains, but it wouldn’t take much for them to finish the week down. At this point it’s a matter of who will flinch first. The bears keep try to pick tops. Will they throw in the towel and push the indexes to new across-the-board highs heading into the weekend? The bulls are feeling good and somewhat complacent because every little dip gets bought (and they should feel good), but will they have the urge to take a few bucks off the table?
Right now the market has a mind of its own. It’s gonna do what it wants to do, and there’s no sense fighting it. Traditional technical indicators have broken down and have lost their usefulness, so resist getting too indicator obsessed. The market goes through phases like this were it ignores everything and just keeps going. Don’t fight it.
But having said this, the market is not very correlated right now. That means on any given day or week there will be many outliers to the upside and downside. This is not a time where a rising tide will raise all ships. You have to manage your positions wisely because the steadiness of the trend will not rescue you from laggards. Stick with the best stocks in the best groups and take profits along the way. There’s always another trade. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers