Before the Open (Sep 15)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and India each dropped around 1%. Europe is currently mostly down. Greece is down 0.9%, followed by Italy (down 0.9%), Prague and Russia (down 0.7% each) and Austria (down 0.5%). Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.

Happy Birthday Leavitt Brothers -> special offer here.

The dollar is up. Oil is down, copper is down. Gold is up, silver down.
We enter this new week with the market having taken a turn down last week. The S&P’s 4-week winning streak ended, and the Russell dropped for the second straight week. The bulls have no wiggle room here. After trading range-bound for almost three weeks, the lows were taken out, and now there’s a pattern of lower highs and lower lows going back about 7 days.
Besides the indexes trading near 3-week lows, many indicators have turned down. If you remember, some supported more upside while others lagged and hinted at internal deterioration. But now, several of the supporting indicators have also weakened to the point of no longer being considered “cycling within an uptrend.” Odds now favor a move down. This doesn’t mean the long term uptrend is over, it just means the near term has shifted from “consolidation” to “downtrend.”
There are some major events this week. Alibaba will go public. It’ll do well, but the offering will siphon money from the rest of Wall St. Also, major events like this have acted as turning points for the market. There’s a Fed meeting this week. Some are expecting the Fed to change their language regarding when interest rates will start to move up. Also, Scotland votes on their independence. I have no idea what this means for the market, but it is a pretty major event, and since the world is very connected, you never know what the domino effect will be.
If you’re not interested in going short (or buying an inverse ETF), protect what you have. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH -0.62%) will acquire Trizetto for $2.7 billion in cash.
Barrick Gold (ABX -2.02%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underweight’ at HSBC.
Acuity Brands (AYI -0.03%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
Cree (CREE -1.32%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Yahoo! (YHOO +3.93%) rose nearly 3% in pre-market trading after Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company in which Yahoo is the second-biggest shareholder, said it plans to increase the top end of its IPO price range to above $70 amid stong investor demand.
Chuy’s (CHUY -0.66%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at KeyBanc.
Universal Health (UHS -1.36%) will replace Peabody Coal (BTU unch) in the S&P 500 as of the close of trading on Sep 19.
United Rentals (URI +0.43%) will replace Graham Holdings (GHC -0.38%) in the S&P 500 as of the close of trading on Sep 19.
HSBC (HSBC +0.55%) confirms it will pay the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) $550 million to settle the claims brought by FHFA in 2011 related to residential mortgage-backed securities that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased from HSBC between 2005 and 2007.
P2 Capital Partners reported a 5.4% stake in Blackhawk (HAWK -0.18%).
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Empire State Mfg Survey
9:15 Industrial Production
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