Before the Open (Dec 31)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Happy New Years.
Most of the Asian/Pacific markets were closed today. China rallied almost 1%. Many of the exchanges in Europe didn’t open either. Belgium moved down; London and France moved up. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold is up, silver down.
The market is poised to complete its best year since 1995. Pretty amazing. 2013 was better than any of the late 1990’s bubble years…and it’s taking place after the market had already doubled off its 2009 bottom. As I’ve been saying, the most bearish observation I can make is that the market is up so much that it will eventually need to rest. That’s it. Otherwise everything I’m looking at supports the uptrend. There are no warnings. There are no beneath-the-surface subtle hints that something is brewing. Investor confidence is high. Small business confidence is high. People are feeling good (well, at least those who have jobs are feeling good).
But we’re traders. So although the trend is up, we still need to manage our positions wisely. Take some money off the table. Rotate funds into new stocks and new groups that are perking up. In hindsight buying on January 1 and holding all of 2013 was a great strategy, but that’s only because the market had it’s best year in 18 years. Most of the time, that strategy doesn’t work, so don’t kick yourself if you didn’t do as well as you should have. If the market trades in a big fat range in 2014, those of us who trade will out-perform by a long shot.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Empire Capital reported a 5.8% passive stake in Veeva Systems (VEEV +0.06%) .
Haemonetics (HAE -1.12%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Benchmark Co.
Business Insider reports that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ -0.43%) is planning to cut another 5,000 jobs in addition to the 29,000 jobs it had targeted previously.
DigiTimes reports that solar-grade crystalline silicon wafer prices have risen to 98 cents-99 cents due to strong demand and high-efficiency wafers have exceeded $1 and that prices are also likely to rise by another 5% in January 2014.
Marvell (MRVL +0.95%) jumped 9% in pre-market trading after KKR Fund Holding reported a 6.8% stake in the company.
Boeing (BA -0.72%) was awarded a $750 million government contract to provide integrated engineering services for the B-1 weapon system.
Transforce reported a 19.95% stake in Vitran (VTNC -3.44%) .
Bloomberg reported that FedEx (FDX -0.26%) has been sued by New York City for delivering untaxed cigarettes from a Long Island Indian reservation to New York City residents’ homes, with the city seeking $52 million from the shipper.
Great Point Partners reported a 5.69% passive stake in Aveo Pharmaceuticals (AVEO +8.02%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
7:45 ICSC Retail Store Sales
8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales
9:00 S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index
9:45 Chicago PMI
10:00 Consumer Confidence
10:00 State Street Investor Confidence 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