Before the Open (Jun 18)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up across the board. Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is up 4%; no other index has moved 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil is down > 1%; copper is down. Gold and silver are both down.
So the Greek elections are over. Without getting into details and naming names, the parties that wished to stay in the euro and work with the EU on a bailout won, so for now there’ll be no ripping up the old bailout, leaving the euro and re-establishing a new currency. Markets around the world can now breathe a collective sigh of relief. It doesn’t mean things are better out there, and it certainly doesn’t change any thing in spain, Italy and other struggle countries, but it does mean some uncertainty has been lifted.
The euro initially gapped up and rallied on the news but has stair-stepped down since and is now down.
Looking at the futures, I’d say the news from Greece was mostly expected and therefore a non-event. This is the ideal situation. Now the market can trade from a technical standpoint (supply, demand etc) and not be held hostage to an unknown event.
The market has just finished its best back to back up weeks in several months. The Dow and S&P are at 1-month highs. The Nas and Russell are lagging but are at the tops of their ranges. Here are the dailies…

My bias is to the upside. We could get a release of pressure today since everyone was nervous on Friday. We could also get some post-options expiration movement as traders jockey for position with the next expiration cycle. And of course there’s a FOMC meeting on Wednesday. But overall, a major item has been taken off the table and the charts have improved greatly the last couple weeks, so for now I favor the upside.
Spanish 10-year bond yields have held steady above 7% all day. Italy’s is above 6%.
Fitch lowered India’s outlook to “negative.”
Bershire Hathaway is paying $3.85 billion for a mortgage business and loan portfolio from bankrupt Residential Capital LLC. Buffett has been wrong about a housing recovery in the past. We’ll see if he has timed this purchase a little better.
Microsoft has sent out invitations to the press and industry analysts for a “major” announcement, but they didn’t say what it was.
More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers