Before the Open (Nov 7)

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Indonesia and Singapore rallied 0.8%; Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan 0.7%. Europe is mostly down. Belgium is up 1%; France down 0.8%, Austria and Amsterdam down 0.5%. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap down open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold is up, silver down.
Election Day was super smooth, and it was fairly easy to know who’d be president the next four years. Wall St. wanted a convincing win, and that’s exactly what it got. No hanging chads or contested ballots or much involvement from lawyers. Overall it was a smooth day and night. Love it or hate it, we can now move on.
S&P futures were down almost 15 last night after the networks announced Obama would win re-election. Then they rallied all the way back and were up in the middle of the night. Then Mario Draghi, head of the ECB, warned that “data suggest economic slowdown has reached Germany.”
Here are earnings related headlines…
Macy’s (M) did well with earnings.
WellPoint (WLP) did well, but their per share numbers were mostly due to a lower float. The stock is down 3.3%.
Time Warner (TWX) beat on earnings but posted a revenue decline.
vKraft Foods Group (KRFT) is up 0.7% after posting slightly better numbers than last year. They also affirmed their ful-year outlook.
Molson Coors (TAP) beat expectations by a small amount.
Plexus (PLXS) is down 25%.
Virnet Holding (VHC) is up 29%.
Sprint Nextel is paying $480M for PCS (part of U.S. Cellular).
Henry Schein’s (HSIC) Q3 earnings rose, and they raised the lower end of their full-year earnings range.
Cognizant Tech (CTSH) earnings jumped 22%.
AES’s (AES) Q3 loss widened.
My bias has been to the downside for a few weeks. With the indexes gentle sloping down and many indicators pointing to more downside, the days of buying stocks and letting the charts play out ended more than a month ago. But the downside isn’t convincing either. A bottoms-up approach reveals a handful of longs and short, but neither side dominates.
Last Thursday the market rallied. Then everything was given back Friday. Yesterday the market rallied again. Today everything will be given back at the open. Wall St. can’t make up its mind.
Our goal as traders is to trade when the odds are favorable, and right now, even though my bias is to the downside, the market is all over the place. This is not a time to place big bets. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers