Before the Open (Dec 17)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed and with a downward slant. Japan rallied 0.9%; Taiwan dropped 0.9% and South Korea dropped 0.6%. Europe is currently mostly down. Greece is down 2%; Amsterdam, Norway and London are down 0.5% or more. Futures here in the States point towards a slight up open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are down slightly. Gold and silver are down.
I don’t have any new comments to make that I didn’t make over the weekend in my weekly report. Overall I lean to the upside, but in the near term, things are unclear.
The indexes rallied nicely off their November lows and then last week got rejected by levels that previously offered support. I’d consider the selling pressure to be normal in the grand scheme of things. Breaking out when cross-currents are swirling is tough. And given the indexes moved up five straight days just to get to resistance made the task even harder.
The indexes are resting, and the indicators are mixed. Some are in good shape; others are flashing warnings. Hence the picture is mixed in the near term.
Citigroup has lowered its rating on Apple (AAPL) to neutral (what a joke, they’re idiots, where were they 200 points ago).
Clearwire (CLWR) is down almost 9% premarket. They agreed to be bought for a price about 10% below where it closed Friday.
Akamai (AKAM) named co-founder Tom Leighton as CEO.
AIG (AIG) is selling its stake in Asian life insurer AIA Group for $6.5B.
News regarding the fiscal cliff is that John Boehner is edging closer to the President’s key demands. It seems Boehner is willing to raise taxes on the rich, but there’s a disagreement about what the definition of rich is. Obama says it’s anyone who makes more than $250K while Boehner says the number should be $1M? The top tax rate charged is also a heavily debated.
Christmas falls next Tuesday, so this week will be the last normal trading week of the year. The market will be dead all next week.
More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers