Before the Open (Aug 1)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Happy Fed Day.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China and Singapore moved up; Japan moved down. Europe is currently mixed with perhaps a downward bias. Austria is down 1.2%; London and France are up. Futures here in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are down.
The FOMC makes their announcement at 2:15 est today. No one expects them to change rates, but there is a growing consensus they’ll committ to keeping rates low until 2015. This, in my opinion, is the theft of the century…300+ million people earning no interest for so many years. Anyone who has savings is getting screwed…all so the banks can recapitalize their balance sheets. Of course if rates were moved up, the stock market would get clobbered. Not because higher rates would be such a drag but because fixed income would become attractive again. Heck, it’s attractive now (see bond yields). If rates were moved up, there would be a huge flow of money from the stock market to the bond market, and stocks would get pummeled. At this point in time, this is probably the main reason the Fed can’t raise rates.
Wall St. will also be reading the Fed’s statement very closely for hints or outright statements of QE3. A week ago I would have said ‘maybe’, but not now. Economic numbers have improved recently, and the Dow and S&P are only one day removed from a higher high. The Fed is not going to do QE3 unless they absolutely have to, and right now, they don’t.
The Bank of London and European Central Bank also announce interest rate policy soon, and then we get the latest employment numbers on Friday. It’s been a slow week so far, but this is about to change. Stay tuned. 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 (Aug 1)”

  1. Too much expectation. The ADP jobs number was up, but not necessarily representative of the NFP. Focus on the equities for clues of what the market believes. The tendency is for investors to be too emotional.
    The long hinges on Congress, if it can not function to remove the uncertainty on taxes, adjust spending cuts to sustainable levels, and restructure SS and Medicare, just skip all the noise on intervening events. That is what runs the future. It appears now that the Fed
    will print money to continue and inflation is the longrun future.

  4. money follows yeild
    come to OZ and get 5% on bank deposits
    pitty the yanks –no i dont–ur politicians and variouse feds created this mess of corruption
    get rid of your free hand outs to the middle class–rich and poor
    cut out food stamps -the dole and all the perks to variouse bludgers and rich
    put in a flat tax of at least 20% on everything and everyone and public flogging for tax cheats–live with in ur means but have incentives for hard work
    thats how usa was back in the 50s 60s when everyone had pride in their work
    but prepare for the biggest betrayal of all–the over 50% devalueation of the usd in favour of the chinesse yaun,with the yaun to be the worlds reserve currency
    well back to my daytrading–just love the volitility -whipsaw
    wouldnt be supprised if the markets dont fall out of the skyscraper by friday

    1. did you notice knights buy programs get stuck? Alot of stocks went up 10% before they got it turned off. great short if you were fast on the trigger. ACI went up 7% then dropped 10%

  7. cnbc is saying 2 dozen stocks were halted. they think creation today of a dark pool malfunctioned. hilarious. I’m going to drink to this at the close.
    they say there was screaming on the floor to turn it off LMAO

  9. 30 min to the magic show
    he will cut this pigs throat, but to everyone’s amazment it will not fall over.
    if you look around back you will see a stick up it’s ass keeping it from falling more
    than 1% then popping back up as if resurected by God

  11. Jason
    We’re sitting right on the 50 and 200 on the sp 600. If we don’t get some good news
    out of europhia or at least some prop tomorrow it looks like down to me

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