Before the Open (Jun 17)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan rallied 2.7%, and Hong Kong moved up 1.2%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is down 2.4% while Switzterland, Amsterdam, Germany, Spain and France are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap up for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are down.
I don’t have anything to add to the comments I made over the weekend in my weekly report and video.
I’m neutral right now. The overall trend remains up; the short term trend leans down. Lately we’ve gotten many big gap opens, lots of intraday reversals, equal number of up and down moves and a general lack of ability for either the bulls or bears to completely take control. The trend has been down, but it’s perfectly normal for a healthy market to trade against its overall trend while it consolidates.
Here’s the SPX daily. Two different trendlines plus the 50-day MA all come into play in the low 1600’s, so that’s a key zone.

There’s a big Fed meeting Wednesday. With all the talk about the Fed tapering their bond purchase program, this is one of the most important meetings in a long time. It could be a game changer, but the anticipated tapering is well advertised and is in the process of being factored into the market.
Here are stock-specific headlines from barchart.com…
Marvell (MRVL -0.18%) was upgraded at Susquehanna to “Positive” from “Neutral” who also raised their price target on the stock to $14 from $10.
Edison International (EIX +0.86%) was upgraded to “Outperform” from “Market Perform” at Bernstein.
Red Hat (RHT -0.09%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Positive” at Susquehanna who also lowered its price target on the stock to $50 from $65.
Time Warner Cable (TWC +8.09%) was downgraded to “Market Perform” from “Outperform” at Raymond James, who also upgraded Comcast (CMCSA -0.03%) to “Strong Buy” from “Outperform.”
Mitsubishi Corporation (MSBHY -4.50%) has contracted with Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies (UTX -0.29%) , to acquire 11 S-76D helicopters for use in Search and Rescue operations by the Japan Coast Guard.
CIT Group (CIT -1.10%) was upgraded to “Buy” from “Hold” at Drexel Hamilton.
Boeing (BA -0.32%) and Qatar Airways have announced and agreement worth up to $2.8 billion for nine 777-300ERs.
The WSJ reported that Merck (MRK +0.10%) is planning to cut jobs and strip a level of senior management from its R&D unit.
QLogic (QLGCN) will be deleted from the S&P 400 and added to the S&P 600 as of the Jun 21 close.
Coldwater Creek (CWTRN) will be deleted from the S&P 600 as of the Jun 21 close.
Zoetis (ZTSN) will be added to S&P 500 as of the Jun 21 close.
First Horizon (FHNN) will be deleted from the S&P 500 and added to the S&P 400 as of the Jun 21 close.
Raytheon (RTNN) has been awarded a $534.8 million firm-fixed-price contract from the U.S. Air Force for AMRAAM Production.
Cintas (CTASN) CEO says the company “will finish FY13 with record revenues.”
headlines at Yahoo Finance
headlines at MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers