Before the Open (Oct 14)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets leaned to the downside. A few markets were closed. China and India moved up. Australia, Singapore and Taiwan moved down. Europe currently leans to the downside, but there are no big movers. France, Germany, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Czech Republic are down. Futures here in the States point towards a sizable gap down open for the cash market.

The dollar is down slightly. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are up.
It’s all about the budget and debt ceiling talks. Last week, on word an agreement on an extension was going to be hatched, the market soared. It enjoyed its single biggest up day of the year and followed it up with a solid up day Friday. The market was anticipating an agreement on the budget and debt ceiling this weekend, but it didn’t happen. As of this writing, S&P futures are down 12 (Friday’s gain was 10.6), so all of Friday’s gains will be wiped out at the open. Easy come, easy go.
Risk is definitely elevated right now. If left alone, I’d be confident a bottom was in place, but the market isn’t alone. Market-moving new is always on the horizon. At the beginning of last week we saw what could happen when talks in Washington break down (the S&P dropped almost 50 points). Then at the end of the week we saw what could happen if an agreement seemed close (the S&P rallied more than 50 points).
Literally at any time of the day, the market could take off and plunge. Be careful.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Dunkin’ Brands (DNKN +1.02%) was upgraded to “Buy” from “Hold” at Miller Tabak.
Williams (WMB +1.12%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Buy” at ISI Group.
According to the NYT, Senate Democrats decided yesterday to refuse to agree to any budget deal that locks in funding for next year at sequester levels.
Coach (COH +0.74%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Canaccord.
Merck (MRK -0.42%) was downgraded to “Market Perform” from “Outperform” at Bernstein.
Consolidated Water (CWCO +5.52%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Brean Capital due to valuation.
Iron Mountain (IRM -2.17%) was upgraded to “Outperform” from “Neutral” at RW Baird.
Boeing (BA -0.77%) said that furloughs possible if the partial government shutdown continues, according to Bloomberg.
Microsoft (MSFT +1.10%) joined in Brazilian antitrust complaint against Google (GOOG +0.43%), according to the Financial Times.
Potbelly ({=PBPB) is ‘grossly overvalued’, according to a weekend article by Barron’s.
EMC (EMC +0.56%) , Cisco (CSCO +1.17%) , and NetApp (NTAP -0.07%) could be threatened by cloud operators like Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN +1.87%), according to a weekend article in Barron’s.
Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC +3.07%) looks really cheap, according to a weekend article by Barron’s.
Northwest Natural Gas (NWN +0.46%) raised its quarterly dividend to 46 cents per share.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:00 PM Bernanke Press Conference
Notable earnings before today’s open: none
Notable earnings after today’s close: PKG
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers