Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Indonesia dropped 1% while India, Hong Kong and Australia did well. Europe is currently mostly up. Stockholm and Belgium are doing well. A few markets are closed, and most markets are little moved. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are up.
For the third straight week the market moved up. Several indexes hit new all-time highs, and while the Nas and Russell small caps have lagged, they’ve done great lately and have closed part of the gap.
The bears are thoroughly frustrated again. The market was supposed to drop. The list of reasons a top was in place or forming was long. And here we are at new highs, and the shorts have been clobbered again…almost like clockwork.
Unless you’re running a billion-dollar+ hedge fund and it takes time to scale in and out, I cannot find one reason why traders have to guess what the market is going to do next. Why not just go with the flow until the flow ends, knowing that your account size is small enough to get flat in a very short period of time. Yes trading had been iffy, but conditions improved a bunch a couple weeks ago. There has been no reason to be short the last couple weeks. I’m of course talking about swing trading. If you trade much shorter time frames, fine, you can go long and short because the overall trend matters less. But if you’re trading the intermediate term, being long was the only way be the last few weeks.
Now we’re at a point where prices are a little stretched. Many stocks have run since breaking out of their patterns, and the risk/reward ratios aren’t nearly as good as they were. I’m expecting more upside going forward, but I’d warn against chasing stocks higher. Be selective. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Merck (MRK -0.43%) acquires Idenix (IDIX +4.03%) for $24.50 per share in cash or $3.85 billion.
Sempra Energy (SRE -0.40%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at ISI Group.
Principal Financial Group (PFG +1.45%) was upgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Underweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Capital One (COF +1.23%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Nomura.
J.M. Smucker (SJM +1.32%) was upgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Underperform’ at Wells Fargo.
Novartis (NVS +0.34%) was upgraded to ‘Equalweight’ from ‘Underweight’ at Barclays.
Dollar General (DG +0.52%) rose 4% in after-hours trading after Icahn said he may push for a merger between Dollar General and Family Dollar.
Family Dollar (FDO +0.70%) jumped over 6% in after-hours trading after billionare investor Carl Icahn reported a 9.39% stake in the company.
The FDA approved Biogen Idec’s (BIIB -0.81%) Eloctate, Antihemophilic Factor, Fc fusion protein, for use in adults and children who have Hemophilia A.
Emancipation Capital reported a 5.8% passive stake in I.D. Systems (IDSY +2.30%) .
Reid Walker reported a 9.0% stake in Superior Drilling (SDPI -3.86%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
12:30 TD Ameritrade IMX
Notable earnings before today’s open: FGP
Notable earnings after today’s close: CASY, PBY, SURG, TPLM
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers