Before the Open (Dec 10)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with an upward bias. China rallied 1.1%; Malaysia also did well. Europe is currently trading with a downward bias. Italy is down 3%, Spain down 1.7%, the Czech Republic 1.5%; Austria and Germany are also down. Futures here in the States point towards a slight down open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
I don’t have much to add to the comments I made over the weekend in my weekly report and State of the Market video. There are lots of cross-currents right now. In the near term the indexes are not as correlated as one would expect. And large and important stocks are also moving in opposite directions. Also there seems to be a move to rotate money into some safe-haven groups. These issues all serve as warnings, so we can’t let our guard down.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti will resign once the 2013 budget is approved. This has caused 10-year yields in Italy to jump.
Ingersoll-Rand (IR) is spinning off its security division…and they hiked their dividend 31%…and they’re doing a $2B stock buy-back.
AIG (AIG) is selling 90% of its plane leasing unit for $5.28B.
Nexen (NXY) is up 15%…Canada approved its acquisition by China.
Intermec (IN) is up 24%…being acquired by Honeywell (HON).
Zogenix (ZGNX) is down 39%…the FDA did not approve the firm’s proposed pain drug.
McDonalds (MCD) is up 2.3% premarket…same-store sales numbers were very good.
Jefferies cut Apple’s (AAPL) target from 900 to 800.
That’s it for now. I’m cautiously optimistic. I like the upside, but I’m not exactly “all in.” More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers