Before the Open (Nov 11)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Hong Kong and Japan did well; India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Taiwan lagged. Europe is currently mostly up. Belgium is down 1.2%; France, Amsterdam, Norway, Switzerland, Greece, Italy and Spain are doing well. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
As is typically the case, I don’t have much to say beyond what I wrote in the weekly report posted over the weekend.
The divergence between the large caps and the Nas and small caps is a little concerning.
And if the breadth indicators were in charge, we’d get some weakness right now, not strength.
But, the S&P is just a few points below its all-time high and nicely poised to bust out and rally. If the machines are in control, that’s what’s likely happen. Ignore the technicals, ignore the internals…just have a mind of its own and rally.
Here’s the S&P daily. After several months of “5 steps forward, 4 steps back,” the index has settled into a consolidation range. We got one big down day last week and a quick recovery. The breadth indicators may suggest some internal deterioration, but there is nothing wrong with this chart. The market is in good shape (this has always been the case, I never doubted the big picture). You knos the Wall St. adage…don’t fight the trend.

Stock headlines from barchart.com…
AP reports that Target (TGT +0.45%) is planning to open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, an hour earlier than last year, with stores remaining open until 11 p.m. on Black Friday, and that Best Buy (BBY +3.72%) plans to open at 6:00pm nationwide on Thanksgiving Day instead of midnight to commence this year’s Black Friday shopping.
Applied Materials (AMAT +2.25%) Q3 earnings results likely to beat expectations, says RBC Capital.
Tata Motors (TTM +3.71%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Nomura.
Best Buy (BBY +3.72%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS who raised their price target on the stock to $49 from $35.
TD Ameritrade (AMTD +3.43%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Raymond James.
DigiTimes reports that in the period between June and October, Samsung (SSNLF -10.34%) has placed 40% fewer notebook component orders than forecast and Apple (AAPL +1.57%) placed 50% less than last year.
Eli Lilly (LLY +1.24%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman.
American Tower (AMT -1.24%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup.
Michael Kors (KORS +1.91%) will replace NYSE Euronext (NYX +1.54%) in S&P 500 as of the 11/12 close.
Moody’s Investors Service has raised its outlook on the Ba3 government bond rating of Portugal to stable from negative.
Southeastern Asset reported a 13.1% passive stake in Empire State Realty (ESRT -1.60%).
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
No events scheduled.
Notable earnings before today’s open: ABFS, CRNT, GOGO, PGNX, SLW
Notable earnings after today’s close: AGO, ALIM, BID, CRAY, FTEK, HOLX, IOC, RAX, SHO, SLTM, SPRD, VSAT
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers