Before the Open (Jan 25)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets close mixed and with an up bias. South Korea and China dropped. Australia, India, Japan and Singapore rallied. Europe is currently mostly up. Austria, France, Germany, Stockholm and Greece are posting decent gains. Futures here in the States point towards a gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
The S&P has rallied seven straight days. The net change over this time has only been 25 points, but volume the last five has been above average. The market keeps going and going. It has a mind of its own. Good news from GOOG, IBM and others did not help much on Wednesday, and bad news from AAPL did not hurt yesterday. There’s a disconnect. It’s as if the market has made up its mind ahead of time what it wants to do, and the news is just ignored.
Honeywell (HON) beat Q4 earnings expectations…the stock is up 2.5% before the open.
Procter & Gamble’s (PG) net income more than doubled…then it raised its 2013 forecast…the stock is up 1.9%.
Microsoft (MSFT) is down fractionally in premarket trading after inline revenue numbers and lower PC sales.
Starbucks (SBUX) posted inline results…the stock is up 3.5%.
Hasbro (HAS) says Q4 revenue numbers missed expectations…the stock is down 3.7%.
Halliburton (HAL) is up 3.4% after its earnings call.
Kimberyly Clark (KMB) released earnings and said they’ll be repurchasing $1-$1.2 billion in stock in 2013 and increasing its dividend. The stock is up 1.6%.
Covidien (COV) is up 2.2%…earnings related.
Weyerhaeuser (WY) is up fractionally after its earnings release.
Select Comfort (SCSS) is down 12.4%.
Tempur-Pedic (TPX) is up almost 16%…they posted poor numbers which exceeded expectations.
Research in Motion (RIMM) is up 2.9%…its new mobile platform will be launched in three days.
Oshkosh (OSK) is up 8.4%…its quarterly profit jumped 20%.
My stance remains the same. The trend on all time frames is up, but in the very short term, I’m not overly interested in chasing stocks higher. Trade the good ones only, and manage your positions wisely. So far 2013 is shaping up to be a good year. There’s lots of time left, but you still gotta be responsible. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers