Before the Open (Dec 13)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China dropped; Japan, south Korea and Taiwan rallied. Europe is currently down across the board. Greece, Stockholm and Germany are posting the biggest losses. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
Here’s an update of the daily index charts. The Russell, which had already gapped out of a small consolidation pattern, formed an ugly bearish engulfing candle. The Dow and S&P both penetrated resistance yesterday but closed at their lows and below their respective resistances. The Nas got rejected by resistance.

We entered yesterday with a lot of cross-currents. The small caps wanted to rally, but the large caps and Nas would need to follow along. The FOMC was an unknown but was going to come and go while the fiscal cliff talks were going to linger. With resistance just overhead for many of the indexes, it seemed to be do or die time, it seemed like the market needed to bust out and run or rest – one or the other. The problem was the market had already rallied five straight days, so it needed to restore its spent energy, and although the time of year would suggest good feelings and upward price action, could we really expect a full-blow rally prior to the fiscal cliff being dealt with. Needless to say, there were lots of cross-currents and we ended up getting false breakouts yesterday.
I’m maintaining my stance. I’m cautiously bullish, but we have to play good defense.
CVS (CVS) has hiked its dividend 38% and is doing a $4B buyback.
Barclays is cutting 2000 jobs.
Ciena’s (CIEN) Q4 loss widened.
Best Buy (BBY) is up 14%…more rumors of the stock being taken private.
Companies either pulling forward dividends to this calendar year or paying special one-time dividends include: CAT, INDB, TRLG, ECOL, BGG, LM, MTSC, STSA, BBGI, IPGP, HTLF, CCUR.
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 (Dec 13)”

  1. New moon, could be a change in direction, 1372 looks like a fib target. But the Bernanke
    did a new number that did not seem anything less than insane. We are again in a new land being lead by a sage or a fool. Be careful.

  2. the bull aint dead yet
    just whipsawing for the quad witches that control the universe
    big boy insto market makers are playing both sides
    wait for their sell signal as the flood the world with supply

  3. political hour
    the usa needs to get sane
    cut all entitlements–means test healthcare and tax those above 250 grand a year that dont take out private insurance–change tort law about sueing doctors–stop business sector paying for workers health insuance–make it the responsibility of the individual
    raise the retirement age
    means test unemployment benifits and have work for the dole to build bridges /roads ect
    subsidize small and big business to hire unemployed
    raise capital gains to a sane level
    have a one off wealth tax to pay for uncle ben
    change the pork barreling rule for special interests
    make it a criminal matter to hide debt of balance sheet and make directors personally liable for company failure and misdeads
    WHY SHOULD SOMEONE MAKING I BILLION A YEAR BE ENTITLED TO FOOD STAMPS
    but unless the rich get their food stamps the market might crash

  4. closed my shorts
    nice to see all indexs back in sync intraday
    so now we have quad witch fri range
    or is this the start of something big
    euro not yet confirming
    —cheif crazy bear—-

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