Before the Open (Oct 3)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Taiwan and Hong Kong each rallied more than 1%; China and Indonesia also did well. Europe is currently mostly up, but gains are relatively small. Futures here in the States point towards a negative open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
Day 3 of the government shutdown begins. For government workers who won’t get paid for these off days, the losses are starting to mount.
Wall St has been mostly quiet. The market expected the shutdown and therefore wasn’t surprised. The indexes are mostly flat so far this week, and the range is not overly big.
My first SPX target was 1680. That level was tested again yesterday and again the market bounced. Target #2 is 1650, per the weekly chart.
Even if the government were to reopen today, we’re not likely to get tomorrow’s employment report. The BLS doesn’t have the manpower to compile the data. Wall St is very routine oriented. It’s wants certain numbers on certain days of the week and month, so it’s be slightly knocked out of its comfort zone without access to certain numbers.
Overall I think the market is in good shape. The trend is solidly up, and the weakness over the last couple weeks is what I consider perfectly normal and healthy for a strong market. I’m not one to state odds, but I’d say new highs later this year are a very good possibility.
Here’s the weekly. Don’t let the talking heads on TV convince you the economy is doomed because of the shutdown or other reasons. Let the charts be your guide, and right now, the charts are in very good shape.

Stock headlines from barchart.com…
BlackBerry (BBRY +0.51%) was downgraded to “Underperform” from “Market Perform” at Bernstein.
DigiTimes reports that global photovoltaic installations are forecast to rise to a 3-year high in 2014 and exceed 40 GW for the first time, which should generate installation revenue of more than $86 billion.
Domino’s Pizza (DPZ +0.16%) was downgraded to “Perform” from “Outperform” at Oppenheimer.
Facebook (FB -0.28%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Pivotal Research.
Five Below (FIVE +3.53%) was upgraded to “Buy” from “Neutral” at Sterne Agee.
AllThingsD reported that Lenovo (LNVGY -0.38%) has selected a Qualcomm (QCOM +0.28%) chip for its new K-Series smartphone, a change from the previous version which had used Intel’s (INTC +0.26%) Atom chip.
Zsolt Rumy reported a 18.0% stake in Zoltek (ZOLT -0.18%) .
Randal Kirk reported a 26.2% stake in Oragenics (OGEN -1.29%) .
Whitestone REIT (WSR -1.04%) filed to sell 4 million shares of common stock.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
7:30 Challenger Job-Cut Report
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Factory Orders
10:00 ISM Non-Manufacturing Index
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: STZ
Notable earnings after today’s close: XRTX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers