Before the Open (Jan 21)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hope you enjoyed your day off. My 19 days of visitors ended, and we moved to a new house in the mountains. I’ll post pictures later.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan rallied 1%; Australia, China, New Zealand and South Korea also did well. Europe currently leans to the upside. Greece is down, but Germany, Amsterdam and Switzerland are doing well. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold and silver are down a bunch.
Let’s keep things simple and remind ourselves of what’s going on.
The weekly S&P is solidly trending up and has been working off a negative histogram divergence by moving sideways instead of moving down.

The Daily S&P has moved from one pattern to the next. Last week it tested its previous high and got pushed back. Volume has been equally strong/week on up and down days, so it appears to be an equal battle. The index is essentially unchanged this year.

Couple things on my mind…
Earnings season will ramp up this week…many stocks have gotten crushed after missing expectations.
Options expired last Friday, so with the invisible force that tends to pin prices at certain levels, the technicals may not matter as much as they typically do for the next day or so.
I like the market. I don’t love it, I just like it. But that’s the nature of an uptrend. It puts off enough negative signals to keep people on the sidelines while it climbs and climbs and climbs. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Verizon Communications (VZ -0.37%) reported Q4 EPS of 66 cents, higher than consensus of 65 cents.
Delta Air Lines (DAL -1.61%) reported Q4 EPS of 65 cents, stronger than consensus of 63 cents.
Rockwell Collins (COL +0.69%) reported Q1 EPS of 91 cents, below consensus of 94 cents.
Halliburton (HAL -0.47%) reported Q4 EPS of 93 cents, better than consensus of 89 cents.
Travelers (TRV -0.88%) reported Q4 EPS of $2.68, well ahead of consensus of $2.16.
Regions Financial (RF +0.86%) reported Q4 EPS of 21 cents, stronger than consensus of 20 cents.
Baker Hughes (BHI +0.76%) reported Q4 EPS of 62 cents, better than consensus of 61 cents.
YRC Worldwide (YRCW +2.26%) rose more than 8% in after-hours trading after the Teamsters Union announced a tentative agreement with thwe company.
D. E. Shaw & Co reported a 5.1% passive stake in Tesoro (TSO -0.34%) .
Litespeed reported an 8.1% passive stake in RadioShack (RSH unch) .
Schlumberger (SLB +1.81%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse.
JoS. A. Bank (JOSB +0.66%) board rejected the tender offer from Men’s Wearhouse (MW -1.25%) to acquire all outstanding common shares of Jos A. Bank at a price of $57.50 per share in cash, saying the offer is inadequate from a financial point of view and not in the best interest of Jos. A. Bank’s stockholders.
Southpaw Asset reported 6.8% passive stake in Comtech (CMTL -1.58%) .
Luxor Capital reported a 6.1% passive stake in AMC Entertainment (AMC -0.30%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
No major events scheduled.
Notable earnings before today’s open: AMTD, BHI, COL, DAL, EDU, FRX, HAL, IRWD, JNJ, PETS, RF, SAP, SNV, TRV, VZ
Notable earnings after today’s close: ADTN, AMD, CA, CREE, FNB, FULT, IBKR, IBM, TXN, XLNX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers