Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Quad Witching Day.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed down across-the-board. India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan each dropped about 1%. Europe is currently mostly down, but no index is down more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a huge gap down for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil is down, copper is up. Gold is flat, silver is down.
It’s all about the fiscal cliff. A vote was scheduled in the House last night, but it was canceled because it was obvious it had no chance of passing. S&P futures plunged about 50 points before quickly recovering, and now they’re down about 20.
Wall St. has gotten complacent. It assumes a deal will be made and life will go on. We’ve even gotten some positive comments the last week the two sides were making progress, so the cancellation of last night’s vote was a big shock, a big reminder.
This is a very good interview by Yahoo’s The Daily Ticker. In it, the likelihood of Wall St. feeling some pain (meaning the market drops a bunch) before a deal is reached is discussed.
GE is buying the aviation unit of Avio, an Italian company, for $4.3B.
Research in Motion (RIMM) did better than expected with earnings. The stock jumped in after-hour trading but then gave everything back plus another 12.5%.
Nike (NKE) is up 4% premarket…earnings related.
Walgreens (WAG) is down 1.4%…earnings related.
If nothing else today’s open will serve as a big reminder not to get lazy with positions. You can’t sit back and relax and assume things will work out in a timely manner. When the S&P is 100 points off its low and a few warnings pop up, you gotta take partial profits, manage remaining shares wisely and be a little more cautious with new trades. A deal in Washington will get done, but it’s unknown when. It’s the same dilemma one deals with when the market is likely to correct. Do you hold through a correction or exit positions with intentions of re-entering at lower prices? If you know me, you know I err on the side of taking profits too soon because there’s rarely a shortage of charts to play.
On a brighter note, the world didn’t end. 🙂 More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers
LIFE as we know it ended just before high noon australian time and just after usa pollititans failed
all earth people will now grow massive amounts of hair and become grizelly reverting back to their true nature as BEARS
JUST BEFORE I DIED ,I TURNED OVER MY POST AS CHEIF CRAZY BEAR TO MY SON CHEIF TEDDY BEAR
i have been reincarnated and returned as the great god of war,peace and creation–ACKANAUGHTYIN –and will look after earth
this is a post i held over 3000 years ago as fairrow ackinarthan of egypt
naturally i am a martian allien
Hows those prescriptions working out for you ??