Before the Open (Dec 2)

Good morning. Happy Thursday. Hope you had a great and safe new years.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. South Korea dropped 2.2%, India 1.2%. Indonesia rallied 1.2%. Europe is currently mixed. Greece is up 3.4%; Belgium, France and Spain are down. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil is down, copper up. Gold and silver are up.
The new year starts will many bullish headwinds. Besides the trend being up (most important) and the indexes being very close to their all-time highs (not the Nas) the best year since 1995 was just completed…better than any dot com bubble years. And this all happened without a noticeable correction all year. Can it continue? Can the market put in back-to-back big up years? We’ll see. I’ve done so much better over the years not predicting the market but instead just trading the market that unfolds before me. Guessing the market is going to be up 10% or 15% or down 8% is just flat out stupid in my opinion.
The trend on all time frames is up. At some point the market will correct 5%, and the bears, who’ve been wrong from years, will say “I told ya so.” A stopped clock is right twice a day, and eventually the bears will be right. Whatever.
Right now the trend is up, and we have some good long set ups to play with…not to mention some good trades that we’re still in. As far as I’m concerned, it’s business as usual. Buy dips in great stocks; buy breakouts from appropriate stocks. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Let the market be your guide. Buying good stocks in out-performing groups while paying close attention to the overall market is a winning combination…it’ll always be a winning combination. Don’t make trading harder than it is. Keep it simple. More after the open.
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:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
9:00 PMI Manufacturing Index
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 ISM Manufacturing Index
10:00 Construction Spending
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: none
Notable earnings after today’s close: LNDC
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers