Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. India and Indonesia dropped. Australia led to the upside. Europe is currently mostly up. Italy, Spain and Amsterdam are doing well; Greece is down 1.5%. Futures here in the States point towards an moderate gap up open for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold and silver are up.
Like last week the market is heading into Friday down relatively big, but unlike last week, there is no big catalyst to propel stocks higher. Barring a big move today, the market will close with its biggest weekly loss since September. No big deal. The S&P rallied over 150 points in two months. Doing some backing and filling is perfectly normal and healthy for a strong market. A runaway market is unsustainable (and hard to trade). A market that moves up and down within a trend is much more sustainable (and much easier to trade).
The warnings were obvious a couple weeks ago. The lack of good set ups and several lagging breadth indicators told us the upside was likely limited. Trading is hard when you make it hard, when you put the ball in your court and expect yourself to figure out what’s going to happen. But if you just read the sign posts, it’s not bad. At the very least you can gauge what is likely to happen and then manage your risk accordingly. Over the weekend I’ll review many of the charts I use to determine whether we need to be cautious or whether we can open up a little and be more aggressive.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Amazon.com (AMZN -0.25%) was upgraded to ‘Strong Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at ISI Group.
British Petroleum (BP -1.13%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at UBS.
Advance Auto Parts (AAP +0.82%) was upgraded to ‘Top Pick’ from ‘Outperform’ at RBC Capital.
Anadarko (APC +0.10%) was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan.
FedEx (FDX -0.12%) was upgraded to ‘Strong Buy’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.
Boeing (BA +0.30%) was awarded a $872.77 million government contract for system upgrades for F/A-18 A/B, C/D, E/F and EA-18G aircraft for the U.S. Navy and the governments of Australia, Finland, Switzerland, Kuwait, Malaysia, and Canada.
Billionare investor Carl Icahn reported a 12.51% stake in Hologic (HOLX -0.55%) .
Restoration Hardware (RH -1.17%) raised guidance on fiscal year 2014 EPS view $1.71-$1.74 from $1.65 to $1.70, stroger than consensus of $1.71.
According to data from ComScore, Google Sites (GOOG -0.68%) led the U.S. explicit internet core search market in November with 66.7% market share, followed by Microsoft Sites (MSFT -1.04%) with 18.1% and Yahoo Sites (YHOO +0.51%) with 11.2%.
Quiksilver (ZQK +2.66%) reported a Q4 EPS loss ex-items of -4 cents, weaker than consensus of a 4 cents gain.
SAIC (SAIC -2.44%) reported Q3 EPS of 44 cents, weaker than consensus of 50 cents, and then lowered guidance on fiscal 2014 EPS to $2.13-$2.33, well below consensus of $2.47..
Adobe (ADBE -1.19%) climbed over 6% in pre-market tradng after it reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 32 cents, right on consensus, although it said it signed up 402,000 customers in Q4 to its Creative Cloud online software, higher than analysts’ estimates of 350,000 new customers.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Producer Price Index
Notable earnings before today’s open: none
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 13)”
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Jason says: “I’d love an opportunity to buy stocks at lower prices, so I’m secretly hoping for a break of support and at least a month down to the mid 1750’s.” May get his wish. Breaking the support in the indexes seems very feasible. But why?
PPI down -.1 second month down. So deflation may be in the card? That means more QE? Buy! The house of equity cards are going to be stacked higher. For Friday I think we open up, ending? Who knows. Some one Phone Costa Rica and tell Jason.
Meanwhile, Stanley Fischer at the FED knew all this, or did he? Suspect he hardly knows which direction things are moving. But he will learn soon. Tips and gold down, someone knew deflation was on the agenda.
Now we may have a budget out of the House and maybe the senate will pass something. Debt ceiling remains. All when you were just starting the breath again. Don’t, its not the end of the mess but the beginning of the messes for the spring.
Thurs was a win for the bears, but the bulls defended 1772, mid-range of what I commented needed to be defended. Futures reacted negatively to the 830 report, but held a minor support level and have bounced from it.
For today, there is a big hill for the climbers. The down move y’day added levels of resistance which extend up to 1790. There are no further scheduled eco reports for today, so the only surprise / catalyst can be news. Good or bad.
Support remains in the area detailed in Thurs commentary.
I would add that futures roll-over occurred yesterday and due to the delta between the Mar 14 and Dec 13 contracts, there will be the typical confusion in the market as the traders move from Dec to Mar. You won’t see it unless you trade the futures, but it may be evident in strange moves of the cash SPX.
Futures range overnight was -2 to +8, at +3.75 now.
the great bear market is waiting for the nas 100 explosive exhaustion to crack
it may not do that untill the dec quad witches are dead
i would expect a margin call crash