Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China dropped 1%; Australia, India and New Zealand did well. Europe is currently mostly up. Amsterdam and Norway are down; Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic and Greece are up. Futures here in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.
The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
The market did great last week. Check out the video I posted covering the current state of things. My conclusion was that there was no clear picture in the near term. Some key stocks have improved a bunch lately, but there are still some that are weak. Some key groups have also reversed course. And a few indicators are suggesting a healthy environment, but other are still weakish and suggesting weakness beneath-the-surface. Overall there is no clear picture. Frustrating? Yes, but it is what it is. It’s nice when most things line up and we can enter positions knowing there’s a gentle breeze at our backs, but this isn’t the case right now.
The last seven weeks the market has gone up, down, up, down, up, down, up. Rallies get sold, dips get bought…churn, churn, churn. No clear is a signal…it’s a signal to play it safe until we have more clarity.
This week is packed with news and events. We’re in the heart of earnings season, so on any given day dozens of individual stocks or the entire market could easily gap up or down. We have the end of the quarter on Tuesday and FOMC meeting on Wednesday. And then the latest employment figures on Friday.
With lots of news and no clear picture, conserve capital. More after the open.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers