Before the Open (May 29)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Singapore and Malaysia moved up. Hong Kong, China, India and South Korea moved down. Europe leans to the downside, although several markets are closed. Italy, Spain and Greece lead to the downside; Russia is up 1.1%. Futures here in the States point towards a flat-to-up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil is flat, copper is down. Gold and silver are down.
The market mostly rested yesterday…well deserved coming off a nice run that pushed the SPX to a new high and the Russell and Nas out of consolidation patterns. I’ve been saying the small caps hold the key. They lagged during March and April and prevented the large caps from rallying. Now they’re moving up, so it’s no surprise the large caps are at a new high. Going forward, the small caps still hold the key, along with the Nas. As you can see below, both jumped out of several weeks of sideways movement and then rested yesterday. If these two – and there are many stocks which are in both RUT and COMPQ – can hold their current level and leg up again, the large caps will do the same. But if they drop and drop and drop and fall pack into their patterns, the large caps will make no upside progress. The small caps and Nas are in control.

Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Twitter (TWTR +10.69%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from Hold at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Palo Alto (PANW -0.14%) was upgraded to ‘Strong Buy’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.
Dollar Tree (DLTR -0.73%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Sterne Agee.
Dollar General (DG -3.02%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Sterne Agee.
UBS keeps a ‘Buy’ rating on Apple (AAPL -0.26%) and raises its price target for the stock to $700 from $625.
Celgene (CELG -0.54%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Biogen (BIIB -0.31%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Costco (COST +0.32%) reported Q3 EPS of $1.07, below consensus of $1.09.
Pall Corporation (PLL +0.15%) reported Q3 EPS of 81 cents, weaker than consensus of 83 cents.
Bloomberg reports that American Electric (AEP +0.46%) may decide to sell some of it power plants this year.
Okumus Fund reported a 8.67% passive stake in LifeLock (LOCK +2.52%) .
Apple (AAPL -0.26%) will acquire Beats Music & Beats electronics for $3 billion.
Leidos (LDOS +0.77%) was awarded a $900 million contract by the U.S. Air Force to provide research, development, testing and evaluation for homeland defense and security technical area tasks.
Amerco (UHAL +0.81%) reported Q4 EPS of $2.00, well ahead of consensus of $1.69.
EnerSys (ENS +0.82%) reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $1.18, better than consensus of $1.05.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 GDP Q1
8:30 Fed’s Pianalto: ‘Inflation and Monetary Policy’
8:30 Corporate Profits
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Pending Home Sales
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories
1:00 PM Results of $29B, 7-Year Note Auction
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: ANF, COST, FRED, IKGH, MOD, PLL, QSII, SAFM, SBLK, SOL, TECD
Notable earnings after today’s close: AVGO, BLOX, BNNY, ESL, EXPR, FWM, GES, LGF, NMBL, OVTI, PSUN, SPLK, VEEV, VMEM
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers