Before the Open (Oct 21)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied almost 2%; Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand also did well. Europe is currently mixed. France is down; Norway, Stockholm and Greece are leading to the upside. Futures here in the States point towards a slight up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up slightly. Oil is down, copper up. Gold is flat, silver is up.
Last week was one of the best weeks of the year. The market moved up 4 of 5 days and most of the indexes are sitting at multi-year highs or all-time highs. Once again the bears lost, as they’ve done numerous times over the years. When will they learn? The trend is up until it’s not. If anything the bears should learn to not let their personal opinions/gripes influence their investing/trading decisions. It’s possible to have a negative view of future prospects and still be long because that’s where the easy money is being made.
We do have a few indicators which are not fully supporting these elevated prices, but I never expect everything to be lined up. In fact it’s when everything it lined up that a reversal is not far off.
Looking forward, earnings season is here, so expect individual stocks to gap up or down…but earnings season has been a non issue lately.
We also have a massive amount of economic data to be released, and it’s not known when the numbers will come out. Although there will be a lot of numbers, I don’t expect them to move the market (even though the Fed is data dependent). My hunch is Wall St. will ignore most of the numbers and look forward to the next releases. For example, the employment figures that were supposed to be released Oct 4 will be released tomorrow, but the next report will be come out in couple weeks. My guess is Wall St. will quickly ignore the backlog of numbers and key on the next round.
The trend is up until it’s not, but don’t get lazy at these nosebleed levels.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Kellogg (K +0.80%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Buy’ at BofA/Merrill.
Archer Daniels (ADM +0.32%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Underperform’ at BofA/Merrill.
General Mills (GIS +0.45%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at BofA/Merrill.
Kaiser Aluminum (KALU -7.75%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at KeyBanc.
VF Corp. (VFC +1.19%) reported Q3 EPS of $3.91, stronger than consensus of $3.78.
Haliburton (HAL +1.45%) reported Q3 EPS of 83 cents, better than consensus of 82 cents.
Hasbro (HAS +0.88%) reported Q3 EPS of $1.31, better than consensus of $1.28.
Crown Castle International (CCI -1.11%) reported Q3 EPS of 16 cents, lower than consensus of 17 cents.
Raytheon (RTN -0.99%) was awarded a $406.02 million government contract for the production of Aegis Weapon System AN/SPY-1D Radar Transmitter Group and Missile Fire Control System.
The WSJ reported that JPMorgan Chase (JPM +0.17%) will pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency $4 billion related to claims the bank misled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of mortgages it sold the mortgage-finance companies.
Celanese (CE -0.48%) reported Q3 adjusted EPS of $1.20, better than consensus of $1.15.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
10:00 Existing Home Sales
10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
Notable earnings before today’s open: AOS, BCC, CHKP, GCI, HAL, HAS, LII, MAN, MCD, NVR, PETS, PHG, SAP, VFC
Notable earnings after today’s close: ACC, DFS, HLX, HSTM, HXL, ILMN, NFLX, SONC, TXN, VMW, WRB, ZION
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers