Before the Open (Jun 4)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China dropped 1.2%; Japan rallied 2%, and Indonesia moved up 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is down 1.6%, and Switzerland and the Czech Republic are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States suggest a flat open for the cash market.

The dollar is up slightly. Oil is down, copper up slightly. Gold and silver are down.
It’s Tuesday. By my count the Tuesday winning streak remains in place.
Yesterday the market was weak early and then slowly grinded up the rest of the day and closed at its highs. It’s a battle. There are reasons to believe a correction is underway, and although the bulls have the onus to dig in right now and defend their turf, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. After all, every other dip has been bought, so why would anyone assume that just because we have a couple down days the market is suddenly going to fall apart?
Several indicators do hint that this pullback is different than the last couple, and we need to continue following them closely. But any short trade I take is only meant to be short term until a downtrend really establishes itself.
I find this interesting. Here are the conferences taking place this week.
RBC Capital Markets Global Energy & Power Conference on Mon-Tue, Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference on Mon-Wed, The Canadian Telecom Summit on Mon-Wed, Stifel Nicolaus Consumer Conference on Tue, J.P. Morgan Diversified Industries Conference on Tue-Wed, Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology Conference on Tue-Wed, Credit Suisse Future of Payments Conference on Tue-Wed, Deutsche Bank Access Global Financial Services Investor Conference on Tue-Wed, Stephens Spring Investment Conference on Tue-Wed, Credit Suisse European Gaming Conference on Wed, The 17th European Gas Conference on Wed, Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods Mortgage Finance & Asset Management Conference on Wed, Exploratory Clinical Development World Europe on Wed-Thu, ABAC 2013 Global Third Party Diligence, Audit and Oversight on Wed-Thu, IVT’s Microbiology Week on Wed-Thu, NAREIT REITWeek Investor Forum on Wed-Thu, Credit Suisse Engineering & Construction Conference on Thu, Argus North American Crude Transportation Summit: New Pathways to the Market on Thu-Fri, Fortune Global Forum 2013 on Thu-Fri, Sandler O’Neill & Partners Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference on Thu-Fri.
Throw in all the economic numbers and Fed speakers, and you know exactly why I use the technicals. How can you possibly keep track off all these events? How can you possibly make trading decisions based on what the non stop flow of data, information and opinions? It’s impossible. The charts have a way of smoothing out the noise and allowing us to see the bigger picture.
Here are stock-specific stories from barchart.com..
CME Group (CME +1.24%) upgraded to “Outperform” from “Market Perform” at Wells Fargo who raised their price target on the stock to $80-$90 from $55-$65.
ExactTarget (ET -3.95%) to be acquired by Salesforce.com (CRM -3.05%) for $33.75 per share.
Dollar General (DG +1.42%) reported Q1 EPS of 71 cents, right on expectations, but lowered guidance on fiscal 2013 EPS to $3.15-$3.22, below consensus of $3.28.
Canadian Pacific (CP -0.09%) removed from “Top Picks Live” list at Citigroup and was downgraded to “Underperform” from “Sector Perform” at RBC Capital.
Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS +0.08%) has a strong competitive advantage over Amazon on product availability, says Deutsche Bank who keeps a “Buy” rating on shares of Dick’s Sporting with a $57 price target.
Ulta Salon (ULTA -1.12%) downgraded to “Neutral” from “Buy” at Goldman.
ABM Industries (ABM +1.74%) reported Q2 adjusted EPS of 36 cents, better than consensus of 33 cents, and also raised guidance on fiscal 2013 EPS to $1.40-$1.50 from $1.35-$1.45, higher than consensus of $1.40.
General Motors (GM +1.56%) gained over 3% in after-hours trading after it was announced that it will be added to the S&P 500 and Heinz (HNZ +0.14%) will be deleted as of the June 6 close.
SAIC (SAI +2.34%) reported Q1 EPS of 23 cents, weaker than consensus of 26 cents.
Huntington Ingalls (HII -1.38%) is being awarded a $3.33 billion fixed-price incentive, multiyear contract for construction of five DDG 51 class ships, one in each of fiscal 2013-2017 years for the U.S. Navy.
FedEx (FDX +1.41%) increased its quarterly cash dividend 1 cent to 15 cents per share.
Verint Systems (VRNT +1.31%) reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 44 cents, below consensus of 52 cents.
No big bets right now.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers