Before the Open (Jul 14)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied 1%, Japan 0.9%, and Hong Kong and New Zealand also did well. Europe currently leans to the upside. Stockholm, Switzerland, Norway and Greece are up 1% or more; London, Germany and France are also up nicely. Futures here in the States point towards a relatively big gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down ~ 2% each.
The market pulled back last week. Most of the indexes fell relatively small amounts, but the small caps dropped a bunch – they gave back three weeks of gains in just a couple days.
There are also warnings in the form of some indicators not supporting an upside move. The AD line, AD volume line and a few other breath indicators talked about in the weekly report need to improve if today’s gap up open is going to hold and act as the beginning of a leg up.
Also there aren’t many good set ups to be had right now. When trading is good, it’s difficult to narrow my list to a workable number, but right now, I can barely find a handful of good set ups to trade. That’s just the way it is. I post the best I can find, and if there aren’t many out there, to me it’s a warning that the trading environment isn’t very good. Such is the case in my opinion.
I like the market overall. Unless something major happens in the world, I believe dips will be bought and new highs will be made. But in the near term, things are iffy. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Stifel raised its price target on SanDisk (SNDK +1.16%) to $114 from $95 and keeps a ‘Buy’ rating on the stock as it expects SanDisk’s June quarter results to beat consensus estimates.
Colfax (CFX +0.07%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Argus.
Covidien (COV +0.41%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Piper Jaffray.
DreamWorks Animation (DWA -0.53%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at B. Riley.
Alcentra Capital (ABDC -2.07%) was upgraded to ‘Strong Buy’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.
eBay (EBAY +2.32%) was downgraded to ‘Sector Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Pacific Crest.
Wells Fargo (WFC -0.62%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan.
FMC Corporation (FMC +0.17%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Jefferies.
Apple (AAPL +0.19%) rose 1.3% in pre-market trading after Barclays raised its recommendation on the company to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight.’
Alcoa (AA +2.24%) late Friday filed a $5 billion mixed securities shelf registration.
Noble Corp’s (NE -0.75%) board approved a spin-off of Paragon Offshore.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
No events scheduled.
Notable earnings before today’s open: C
Notable earnings after today’s close: LEDS, OZRK, PPHM
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers