Good morning. Happy Thursday.
Several of the Asian/Pacific markets were closed today. China dropped 1.6%; Japan rallied 1%. Either Europe is closed or Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg aren’t updating their data. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market.
The dollar is down. Oil is flat, copper up. Gold and silver are up.
The addicts are back at it in the US. Many world markets were closed all day on the 24th and most are closed today. But in the US, work is more important than anything else (not that that’s a bad thing), so we’re back at it for a full day of trading.
Just like that the S&P is about 60 points off its post-Fed low. It happens quickly. If you wait for an ideal entry, by the time you get the ‘all clear’ sign, the market is up a bunch, and you’re kicking yourself. This is why, within a strong uptrend, you have to maintain long exposure. You’ll have to sit through corrections from time to time, but you never know when the market will suddenly take off.
Volume has declined the last two days…don’t expect it to be any stronger today than it was Monday or Tuesday. The whole week is shot because Christmas fell in the middle of the week. But this doesn’t mean prices can’t continue up. Those sitting on big gains aren’t going to sell because they’ll have to pay taxes in a few months. Better to wait until January. And there are so many hedge fund traders who aren’t even up 10% this year. Their jobs are in jeopardy, so they’re desperately trying to chase gains into the end of the year. The combination of buying from some hedge fund traders and the lack of selling from others can easily lift the market for another week. This would, however, make rallying the first week of January more difficult. More later.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Reuters reported that a U.S. federal judge rejected British Petroleum’s (BP +0.38%) attempt to require businesses seeking to recover money over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to provide proof that their economic losses were caused by the disaster.
Reuters reported that the hackers who attacked Target (TGT -0.27%) and compromised up to 40 million credit cards and debit cards also managed to steal encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs).
Bloomberg reported that Merck (MRK +0.10%) sued Actavis’s (ACT -0.64%) Warner Chilcott (WCRX -0.78%) unit seeking to block sales of a generic version of its NuvaRing drug.
China’s Xinhua news service quoted its Human Resources and Social Security Minister as saying China will look to keep its urban unemployment rate below 4.6% next year.
DigiTimes reports that Intel (INTC +0.43%) is set to release its 8-core Haswell-E processor in Q3 priced at $1,000.
ChannelAdvisor reported Tuesday that Amazon.com’s (AMZN -0.92%) holiday-to-date same store sales were up 25.2% while eBay’s (EBAY -0.24%) holiday-to-date same store sales were up 9.6%.
Reuters reports that Amazon.con (AMZN -0.92%) will offer free shipping and $20 gift cards to customers whose holiday packages were not delivered on time for the Christmas holiday. UPS (UPS +0.48%) blames the shipping delays on higher-than-expected volumes and recent patches of bad weather.
The Nikkei newspaper reported that Softbank (SFTBF -3.02%) is moving to acquire T-Mobile U.S. (TMUS +1.04%) through its Sprint (S -0.21%) subsidiary in a deal that Softbank plans for as early as spring of 2014.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
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