Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Japan and Taiwan dropped more than 1%; there were no 1% winners. Europe is currently mixed. France, Amsterdam and Greece are up; Austria, Norway and the Czech Republic are down. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
The dollar is flat. Oil is up a small amount, copper down. Gold and silver are both up small amounts.
The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is in talks to buy NYSE Euronext (NYX).
Oracle (ORCL) is buying Eloqua (ELOQ).
CarMax (KMX) is up 6% premarket…earnings related.
ConAgra (CAG) is up 3.5%…profit rose in most recent quarter and they raised their view going forward.
Darden’s (DRI) profit dropped 60%…stock is not trading premarket yet.
KB Home’s (KBH) revenue increased but their net dropped. The stock is down 1.7%.
Nike (NKE) and Research in Motion (RIMM) also have earnings today.
We have two more days of trading this week including options expiration tomorrow. Then Wall St. becomes a ghost town next week. The market is typically quiet between Christmas and New Years, and with Christmas falling on a Tuesday, it’ll be an exaggerated case. Don’t force trades. Have realistic expectations. It’s been a good year and a busy year, and things won’t ease just because the calendar flips. From a technical standpoint, the market is in decent shape but not fantastic shape. Over the last 5 weeks the trend has been up, but if you back the charts up, the last 5 months are neutral. Some of our breadth indicators have failed to support the current move, so we need to be a little more careful going forward. And of course the fiscal cliff talks remain and are likely to lapse into 2014.
I remain cautiously optimistic but am not in the mood to take big risks. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers