Before the Open (Nov 14)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed and with an upward bias. Hong Kong rallied 1.2%; Singapore dropped 1%. Europe is currently mostly down. Greece is up 1.2%; Belgium, France, Germany, Amsterdam and London are down at least 0.5%. Futures here in the States point towards positive open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are up small amounts. Gold is down slightly; silver is flat.
The market has traded in relatively tight range the last three days. In fact, on a closing basis, the last four S&P closes have been within a 6-point range. But if you look at the intraday action, you’d see each rally attempt has gotten sold into…each attempt at pushing prices higher is met with selling pressure soon after. The bulls make little attempts, but they can’t get any traction.
My bias remains to the downside. The market can turn at any time, but for a move to be sustainable, I’d like to see intense selling pressure for a couple days to push the breadth indicators to extreme levels. Otherwise a move is not likely to go far or last long…except for one influence. That influence is news surrounding the so-called fiscal cliff. If an agreement is reached, Wall St. will breathe a huge sigh of relief. The following is a chart put out by Bloomberg which tells us the number of news stories that have the phrase “fiscal cliff.” Obviously, once the election came and went, this is where everyone’s attention turned. Whether the fiscal cliff is or is not a big deal doesn’t matter. People are obsessed with it. If an agreement is reached, the market could easily jump.

Cisco (CSCO) did well with earnings. The stock is up 7%.
Tyco (TYC) beat estimates…stock is down 1.4%.
Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) is up a whopping 32.5% after releasing a big increase in net profit.
Staples (SPLS) is up 4.7%…earnings related.
Facebook (FB) is flat. Several hundred million shares will be unlocked today.
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 (Nov 14)”

  2. sir benny is pumping 80 odd billion into the economy starting yesterday for nov
    but ofsetting that is capital gains tax will have to go up to a realistic level in line with the rest of the world–financial cliff or not
    there will be a bridge done so as the dead cats can be kicked down the road–AGAIN
    BUT that will not stop mutual funds closing their books and taking any capital gains available
    and that includes the world that own usa
    technically a 2 day up to help the big insto bank market makers with opts ex can happen so as the bears can get set

  3. i think the stock indices bottom out toward the end of next week after expiration and rally into year-end. next year will be a rough one from the getgo unfortunately..

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