Before the Open (Dec 9)

Posted on by Jason Leavitt

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Australia dropped, but India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan posted solid gains. Europe currently leans to the upside. None of the major markets have moved much from their unchanged levels. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil is flat, copper up. Gold is up, silver flat.
So here’s the battle…
The long term trend is solidly up. Pretty much everything I look at points towards a continuation of the uptrend into 2014. But in the near term, two things bother me. 1) There’s a lack of very good set ups to play right now. Typical when the market is strong and the direction obvious, it’s hard to narrow my list of good set ups. Now, it’s hard to find a handful of good ones. 2) Several breadth indicators are not supporting more upside right now. There seems to be less participation.
Was the first four days of last week indicative of what’s to come or was Friday step one in beginning the market’s next leg up? This is the big question.
There’s a lack of scheduled news events (earnings, econ reports) this week, so the market is going to move based on good old fashion support and demand.
In my opinion, the market has some work to do short term. It’s gotta show us another card or two.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Marathon Petroleum (MPC +4.00%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underweight’ at JPMorgan.
Mohawk (MHK +1.08%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse who also raised the price target on the stock to $166 from $142.
Dean Foods (DF +0.77%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Kraft Foods (KFT) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley with a price target of $60.
Manitowoc (MTW -0.05%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Longbow.
Noble Energy (NBL +0.67%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank.
Valero Energy (VLO +2.71%) and Phillips 66 (PSX +2.17%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
Monsanto reported a 9.87% passive stake in Evogene (EVGN -2.15%) .
Gilead Sciences (GILD +1.09%) rose nearly 5% in pre-market trading after it announced that the U.S. FDA has approved its Sovaldi 400 mg tablets, a once-daily oral nucleotide analog polymerase inhibitor for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C infection as a component of a combination antiviral treatment regiment.
FJ Capital reported a 8.22% passive stake in Atlantic Coast Financial (ACFC +0.52%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
No events scheduled.
Notable earnings after today’s close: CASY, MTN, PBY, PVH
Notable earnings after today’s close: none
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers

0 thoughts on “Before the Open (Dec 9)”

  1. . 1. FOMC Member Bullard Speaks at 1:05 PM EST. This is major possibly.
    2. Lack of economic news in the USA. Japan is having a yen devaluation which will hurt their deflation fight, cheaper yen means more expensive imports. Watch they are a model of what QE means for those doing such things. Much pain and radiation too.
    What happened Friday? The traders loved the numbers and put on a show: all is well and getting better?? Probably not. In Washington the budget is a mess, and the debt ceiling is the war for control of Congress 2016, not that Obama cares, he runs a one man government when he is in town. This will hurt the markets, so caution when it it starts. And if there is peace in the gulch, remember the mark is you; they won in Wash DC and you lost. Duck

  2. Remember the support level I mentioned Thurs and Fri, at 1780 area (Wed’s low). Since that area is holding solidly, the target is 1825, + or – a point or so.
    For today, tho, with Fri’s enormous move, expect a retracement.
    Could pullback to 1800, or even down to 1792 ish and the uptrend remains intact.
    A break of 1790 and the uptrend is in jeopardy.
    Coming into the seasonal “feel good” time of year. Odds say higher.
    Futures have been positive since 6 pm open last night. Now +3.50

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