Before the Open (Aug 2)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore moved down; New Zealand moved up, but nothing moved more than 1%. Europe is currenly mostly up. Switzerland and Greece are up about 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold and silver are up.
The European Central Bank left its target rate unchanged at 0.75%.
The Bank of England held its benchmark rate unchanged at 0.50%.
The Fed did their thing yesterday, and now that Europe has made similar accouncements, focus shifts to tomorrow’s employment numbers.
Many of the divergences I’ve discussed remain in place. On Monday the S&P made a higher high while the Russell small caps and S&P mid caps failed to match the movement. Yesterday most of the indexes dropped a small amount; the Russell dropped a bunch, thus making it much harder to negate the divergence. Here’s a chart comparing the three indexes.

Why do I keep talking about this? Well, mostly because it’s important, and I’m not one that needs a laundry list of reasons to form a bias. Having a list of 10 criteria and then saying: “7 of 10 are bearish, so therefore I’m bearish” is a terrible way to form an opinion. Often there is only one or two criteria that needs to be keyed on, and the rest are just noise or distractions.
Don’t make trading harder than it is. Most of a stock’s movement is based on the overall market and group it belongs to. Trade in the direction of the trend (there is no dominant trend right now); identify the best groups (groups run hot and cold as money rotates from one to the next); play the best stocks in those groups. And if it’s not obvious, take a pass. Better trades will set up. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers