Before the Open (Jul 16)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. India, New Zealand and South Korea led to the downside; Japan led to the upside. Europe is currently trading mixed. Austria, France, Amsterdam, Spain and the Czech Republic are down; Greece is up. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.
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The S&P moved up again yesterday – its 8th consecutive up day and it’s 12th of the last 14 days. For the Nas 100, it’s 14 straight up days.
There are no reasonable trendlines that can be drawn to graphically describe the action. When the market just goes and goes, you can throw TA out the window because emotion is playing a bigger role than anything else. Many indicators are overbought, but they can stay overbought for a long time. The indexes themselves are of course over-extended, but this has potential staying power too. Right now it’s all about squeezing the last short and enticing the late-to-the-party bulls who have missed this move to throw all caution to the wind and jump in. Then we’ll get a mini correction.
Don’t get lazy. Rotate money from trades that hit your targets to new patterns than have greater upside potential. Earnings season is front and center. Unless my intent is to collect dividends over a long period, I do not hold into an earnings report. No matter what. There are too many good stocks and patterns to trade to take an earnings-related risk. It’s not worth it.
Here are stock-specific stories from barchart.com…
Amazon.com (AMZN -0.32%) was initiated with a “Buy” at SunTrust with a price target of $370.
General Motors (GM +0.27%) was upgraded to “Conviction Buy” from “Buy,” while Ford (F +0.06%) was downgraded to “Buy” from “Conviction Buy” at Goldman.
Yum! Brands (YUM +1.59%) was initiated with a “Buy” at Stifel with a price target of $105.
Texas Roadhouse (TXRH -0.59%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Overweight” at JPMorgan.
DaVita (DVA -0.80%) was downgraded to “Sell” from “Neutral” at Goldman.
Mosaic (MOS +0.05%) reported Q4 EPS of $1.14, slightly weaker than expectations of $1.15.
Comerica (CMA -0.31%) reported Q2 EPS of 76 cents, better than expectations of 70 cents.
J.M. Smucker (SJM +0.61%) raised its quarterly dividend to 58 cents from 52 cents per share.
Marathon Petroleum (MPC -0.19%) said it will take charges of between $1.75-$1.85 on Q2 EPS and Q2 EPS may not compare to consensus estimates for $2.64 per share.
Brown & Brown (BRO +0.09%) reported Q2 EPS of 36 cents, better than consensus of 35 cents.
Cintas (CTAS -0.25%) fell 4% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 EPS of 69 cents, below consensus of 70 cents.
Berry Plastics (BERY +0.23%) sees Q3 revenue of $1.22 billion-$1.23 billion, below consensus of $1.26 billion, due to soft customer demand.
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers
today’s upgrades/downgrades