Before the Open (Jul 3)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan led to the upside, Indonesia lagged. Europe is currently mostly up. London, Germany, Belgium, Amsterdam, Norway and Switzerland are doing the best. Prague is down 0.6%. Futures here in the States point towards a slight up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
If you’re reading this, you’re an addict. 🙂 In a good way of course. Very little has happened this week…yesterday was especially slow…today is likely to be the slowest day of the year. The market closes today at 1:00 est and then is closed tomorrow. I’ll be taking off early. It’s our last weekend in Costa Rica before we head home a week from Saturday. We’ve already said most of our goodbyes (most people left town as soon as school ended last week), and now we’re going on one last trip. This time we’ll be horseback riding through the rain forest to a waterfall and then spending a couple days at our favorite beach on the Pacific coast.
Here are the employment numbers…
unemployment rate: 6.1% (was 6.3% last month)
nonfarm payrolls: +288K
private payrolls:
average workweek: unchanged 34.5 hours
hourly wages: up 6 cents to $24.45
labor participation rate drops to 62.8% (unchanged)
May and April gains were revised up a combined 29,000.
Have a great weekend everyone. Be safe.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Stifel raised its price target for Constellation Brands (STZ +2.34%) to $113 from $90 following the company’s Q1 results and keeps a ‘Buy’ rating on the stock.
International Speedway (ISCA +1.02%) reported Q2 adjusted EPS of 50 cents, better than consensus of 49 cents.
Cree (CREE -0.08%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Perform’ at Oppenheimer.
Comerica (CMA -0.42%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Citigroup.
Athlon Energy (ATHL -1.47%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS.
Altai Capital lowered its stake in RealD (RLD -0.85%) to 5.7% from 9.8%.
Billionare activist investor Carl Icahn reported a 9.39% stake in Family Dollar (FDO +1.29%) .
East Rock Capital reported a 15% passive stake in Bay Bank (BYBK +1.57%) .
SYNNEX (SNX +0.18%) reported Q2 EPS of $1.52, well ahead of consensus of $1.36.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
7:30 Challenger Job-Cut Report
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 International Trade
8:30 Non-farm payrolls
9:00 PMI Services Index
10:00 ISM Non-Manufacturing Index
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 Global Composite PMI
11:00 Global Services PMI
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
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