Before the Open (Sep 19)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Indonesia rallied 4.7%, India 3.4% and Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is up 2% and Belgium, Germany, Norway, Stockholm, London, Spain and Italy are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar, which got hit hard yesterday, is down a little more. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver, which rallied huge yesterday, are up.
By now you know the news. The Fed did not announce their intention to taper their monthly bond purchases. The massive gap, the disconnect, between Wall St. and Main St. continues.
Wall St. is doing great. Corporations are sitting on record levels of cash, and most of the indexes are sitting at all-time highs. But Main St. is struggling. The unemployment rate is still high, and the economy is only doing ok. All the stimulus the Fed has done the last five years – bailing out the banks and auto industry, lowering bank borrowing costs to basically 0 and flooding the economy with 10’s of billions of dollars every month – hasn’t worked well enough for the Fed to even take their foot off the accelerator, let alone put their foot on the brake. I guess as long as inflation is below their target, they feel the freedom to continue pumping money into the system. I just hope another bubble isn’t forming.
Looming on the horizon…tomorrow is quad witching…earnings season starts the second week of October…but the big one is the debt ceiling talks. As of now it looks like we’re heading for another gov’t shutdown. This alone can put a cap on upside movement. It’s a big uncertainty Wall St. will want closure on.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Rite Aid (RAD +0.27%) reported Q2 EPS of 3 cents, better than consensus of a -4 cent loss.
Disney (DIS +0.19%) was downgraded to “Equal Weight” from “Overweight” at Morgan Stanley.
FedEx (FDX +5.03%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Buy” at Goldman.
IHS Inc. (IHS +0.84%) reported Q3 adjusted EPS of $1.27, better than consensus of $1.18.
Pier 1 Imports (PIR +0.64%) reported Q2 EPS of 17 cents, lower than consensus of 21 cents.
ConAgra Foods (CAG +0.69%) reported Q1 EPS of 37 cents, weaker than consensus of 39 cents.
Bloomberg reports that Wells Fargo (WFC +1.07%) is cutting 1,800 mortgage processing jobs in addition to the 3,000 cuts it announced earlier this quarter.
General Dynamics (GD +0.28%) was awarded a $187.53 million government contract for conversion of 44 each M1A1 and 40 each M1A2 model vehicles to a M1A2S configuration in support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Deutsche Bank keeps a Buy rating on Tesla (TSLA -0.01%) and raises its price target on the stock to $200 from $160.
Steelcase (SCS +1.36%) fell over 5% in after-hours trading after ot reported Q2 EPS ex-charge of 24 cents, weaker than consensus of 26 cents.
Herman Miller (MLHR +0.33%) dropped nearly 3% in after-hours trading after it reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 43 cents, right on consensus, and reported Q1 revenue of $468.1 million, slightly better than consensus of $465.1 million.
Oracle (ORCL +1.83%) fell over 3% in after-hours trading after it reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 59 cents, better than consensus of 56 cents, but then lowered guidance on Q2 EPS view to 65 cents-70 cents, below consensus of 69 cents.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 Current Account
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Existing Home Sales
10:00 Philly Fed Business Outlook
10:00 Leading Indicators
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: CAG, IHS, PIR, RAD
Notable earnings after today’s close: CTAS, TIBX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers