Before the Open (Feb 25)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan rallied 2.4%; Australia, China and Indonesia also did well. Europe is currently up across the board. Austria is up 2.6%, Germany 2.4% and France, London and the Czech Republic are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
I don’t have anything to add to my comments posted in the Weekly Report. Last week the market suffered its biggest single down day since the November bottom and also its biggest 2-day losing streak, but by the time the dust settled on Friday, the indexes weren’t down very much.
If a top is in place, I expect it to be tested at least once, possibly twice, over the next several weeks. Tops don’t typical form in a single day. They take time. There are usually several up and down moves that act to give the pros a chance to dump stocks on the lay public. This is if a top is forming, and there’s no guarantee of that. Last week’s selling pressure was news induced, and although some technical damage was done, the news can quickly change. I personally would not be surprised to see the high taken out. One or two down days does not change the trend. Sorry, Wall St. operates much slower than the hysterical media wants us to believe.
From a trading perspective, keep it simple and conservative. Swing for singles and doubles and don’t give profits back. We could see lots of up and down movement over the next few weeks… week-long winning streak that gets the bulls excited followed by a week-long losing streak that gets the bears psyched up again. A month later, after lots of money changes hands, the market will be mostly unchanged. Your trading style must change slightly based on the environment, so make necessary changes given the unclear near term. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers