Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up across the board. Hong Kong and Japan moved up more than 1%. Europe is mixed; there are no 1% winners or losers. Futures here in the States point towards a slight up open for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil is down; copper is up. Gold and silver are down.
There isn’t any major, earth-shattering news out this morning, and since very little happened Monday and Tuesday, my opinion of the market hasn’t changed.
The trend is up, but the market has been mostly very quiet. Even though it’s up nicely over the last six weeks, almost all the gains took place on two days while all other days combine for almost no net change. Unlike June and July, where we saw lots of up and down movement, the intraday and day to day ranges have been small. Individual stocks are moving (we’ve had lots of good charts to play), but the indexes have been mostly quiet. The market quickly digests one major news announcement and then immediately settles into a range while it waits for the next piece of news. This is the market we’ve been dealt. We have to deal with it and make whatever adjustments are needed.
As I stated yesterday, I’ll looking for two things to guage the underlying strength/weakness. 1) How does the market react to good/bad news? Does it rally on good news and easily absorb bad news? Or does it sell off on bad news and not get much of a boost from good news? How the market reacts to good and bad news tells us much about the market’s current psychology. 2) Does the market start to not make sense? Does it start acting wierd and seem disconnected from news flow (which is currently dominating the movement)? If so, this may be a hint of something.
The Bank of Japan is joining the US Fed and the ECB…it will debase its currency and buy assets. It’s a race to the bottom for world currencies.
The Bank of England voted 9-0 to keep its asset purchase program and headline interest rates unchanged.
Housing Starts caused a little boost in the futures.
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 (Sep 19)”
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The Race to debase is on. The currency wars will esculate over this next year. That means oil and metals. Thanks for the afternoon metals piece Jason. I am still reluctant to be invested beyound the core holdings. Europe is still the lode star, and China is in the fog. God knows what is going on it the middle east. Then there is the fiscal cliff. Own some precious metals. Above all I think stocks, good stocks, did I mention stops, are the salvation of the small investor.
Jason,did you post ur opts ex charts this quarter