Before the Open (Dec 23)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are leading the way. Europe is currently mostly up. Germany, Norway, Stockholm, London and the Czech Republic are up the most. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are down. Gold is down, silver up.
Typically the time between Christmas and New Years is the slowest of the year. We’re not there yet, but we’re close enough. Tomorrow is a half-day, and I’m sure there will be many market participants that are content to sit on their hands for the next week.
Many seasonality numbers are in the bull’s favor right now…many stats say the end of the year typically is a good time. But volume is weak, so the strength has more to do with a lack of selling than intense buying. If you’re sitting on big gains, you certainly don’t want to sell right now. At the very least you’ll want to wait until the calendar flips, so you can delay paying taxes. It’s one of the reasons the first 5 days of January are so important. If selling pressure is light, it’s a sign investors are confident going forward and are not eager to book paper profits.
That’s it for now. The trend is solidly up…it’s been like that for a while. The short term hasn’t always been on the same page as the long term. That’s fine…within a long term bull run, the short term will fluctuate. Currently it has turned up. The market looks good, so I seen no reason to abandon my bullish stance. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Apple (AAPL +0.84%) rose nearly 4% in pre-market trading after it announced after 6-years of negotiations with China Mobile that it will be allowed to sell its iPhone in China starting next month. The deal may bring 12 million new iPhone sales for Apple in 2014, according to an analyst from Morgan Stanley.
Tiffany (TIF +0.21%) fell 3.5% in pre-market trading after Swatch Group AG won an arbitration award of 402 million francs ($449 million) from Tiffany.
KB Home (KBH +2.67%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Sell’ at Citigroup.
Xilinx (XLNX +0.90%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Drexel Hamilton.
The WSJ reported that Target (TGT +0.55%) said on Friday that it has received “very few” reports of credit card fraud following a massive data breach that compromised 40 million and debit card accounts.
Micron (MU +2.54%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at BofA/Merrill.
Five Below (FIVE +1.09%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse.
CIT Group (CIT +0.61%) disclosed in a regulatory filing that it reached an agreement with Tyco International (TYC +1.77%) in which CIT will pay $60 million to settle claims asserted by Tyco related to a Tax Agreement that CIT and Tyco entered into in 2002 in connection with CIT’s separation from Tyco.
United Technologies (UTX +1.06%) was awarded a $231.47 million government contract modification for sustainment of F119-PW-100 Engines.
Lockheed Martin (LMT +0.85%) was awarded a $561.96 million government contract modification for nine months of sustainment activities for the F-22 air vehicle.
Levin Capital Strategies reported a 5.5% passive stake in Pinnacle Foods (PF +0.49%) .
Abrams reported a 5.99% passive stake in Global Eagle (ENT +3.24%) .
Blue Ridge Capital reported a 7.82% passive stake in PBF Energy (PBF +1.52%) .
Ronin Capital reported a 7.9% passive stake in Kingstone Companies (KINS +2.40%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Personal Income and Outlays
8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
9:55 Reuters/UofM Consumer Sentiment
Notable earnings before today’s open: PNY
Notable earnings after today’s close: CAMP
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers