Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China and Hong Kong dropped more than 1%; Australia and Indonesia rallied more than 0.5%. Europe is currently mostly up. Austria, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Switzerland and Greece are all posting decent gains. Futures here in the States are pointing towards a moderate gap up for the cash market.
The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
There isn’t much news out this morning. This is good because I don’t have much to add to the comments I made over the weekend in my weekly report or video.
The most notable is the lack of progress made over the weekend with fiscal cliff talks
Iconic Brand (ICON) is buying Umbrol from Nike (NKE).
Delta (DAL) is buying the 49% in Virgin Atlantic from Singapore Airlines – that’s Singapore’s entire stake.
Deckers (DECK) is up 10% premarket.
Dell (DELL) is up 5%…Goldman upgraded the stock and raised its target.
Equifax (EFX) is buying Computer Sciences (CSC).
Per my analysis, the market is a little over-extended right now. A few indicators I watch that help me determine if we’re in the beginning stages of a move or if the move is tired and needs to rest are at extreme levels. Despite today’s expected gap up, we need to be careful chasing stocks long. The market needs to undergo a mini correction or, at the very least, grind sideways for a week or so to allow stocks to reset.
The fiscal cliff talks are still a wild card. Good news or bad news can push stocks up or down very quickly.
The market is attractive right now, but in the very near term it needs to rest. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers