Before the Open (Aug 29)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China rallied 1%; Indonesia dropped 1% – the other markets closed within 0.5% of their unchanged levels. Europe is currently mixed. Russia is down 1.3%, followed by Norway (down 0.5%). Greece is up 0.9%, followed by Italy (up 0.7%). Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are up. Gold down, silver up.
It’s been an okay week so far. All the indexes are up, but they’re all off their highs. In fact there’s very little change between Monday’s open and yesterday’s close. Monday was a solid up day…Tuesday was strong early and then weakish…Wednesday was boring and nondescript…Thursday started on a big down note, and then the SPX recovered, but the RUT did not. Even though we have across-the-board gains for the week, the indexes have spent move time moving down than up. But considering the extent of the recent move (SPX up 100) this month, and escalating tensions between Russia/Ukraine, it’s not a bad performance for the market to trade mostly quietly in a smallish range.
I like the market overall, but in the near term I’ve scaled back. The risk/reward for new trades right now is not great. There’s a time to be aggressive and a time to scale back. Now is a time to scale back…at least per my style.
We have a 3-day weekend ahead of us, so today is likely to be slow…along with the first couple days next week. Don’t force things. Have a good one (if you won’t be around today).
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Big Lots (BIG -1.58%) reported Q2 continuing operations EPS of 31 cents, better than consensus of 30 cents.
Athlon Energy (ATHL -0.33%) was initiated with an ‘Overweight’ at Barclays with a price target of $58.
Casella Waste (CWST -5.26%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wedbush.
Mobile TeleSystems (MBT -2.61%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank.
Stratasys (SSYS -0.14%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Stifel with a price target of $150.
Riley Investment Partners reported a 8.2% passive stake in STR Holdings (STRI unch) .
OrbiMed reported a 7% stake in Intercept (ICPT -2.09%) .
3G Capital reported a 69.22% stake in Burger King Worldwide (BKW +3.16%) .
OmniVision (OVTI -0.04%) rose nearly 2% in after-hours trading after it reported Q1 Non-GAAP EPS of 91 cents, well above consensus of 53 cents.
Avago (AVGO +0.26%) climbed over 2% in after-hours trading after it reported Q3 EPS of $1.26, well above consensus of $1.06.
Fred’s (FRED -1.51%) reported Q2 adjusted EPS loss of -19 cents, a bigger loss than consensus of -17 cents.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Personal Income and Outlays
9:45 Chicago PMI
9:55 Reuters/UofM Consumer Sentiment
Notable earnings before today’s open: BIG
Notable earnings after today’s close: none
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers