Before the Open (Sep 30)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Hong Kong dropped 1.3%, and Japan dropped 0.84%. Australia rallied 0.52%. Europe is currently mostly up. France and Italy are up 1.2%, followed by Spain (up 1%), Russia (up 0.9%), Prague and Amsterdam (up 0.65%) and Germany and Greece (up 0.5%). Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
This is a semi big day for the market. The last two days it has opened near its lows and rallied nicely intraday, but it’s been unable to put together back-to-back wins in almost two weeks. An up day today – even though it’s the last day of the month and quarter – would neutralize the near term sentiment.
Many indicators are poised to support a rally, so if we get a move here, it’ll be fairly easy to judge. Do the small caps out-perform or continue to lag…does the AD line move up…do the bullish percent charts reverse and move up, etc? Nothing overly difficult or complex. A move up needs to be accompanied by an improvement in the indicators or else the move won’t last long or go far.
One thing that seems for sure…the market is going to shake traders out in both directions so when a directional move begins, the least number of traders as possible benefit. That’s the MO of the invisible hand…confuse as many as possible so very few make money.
I don’t know what comes next. Most of the time there’s an obvious trend in place, and I can comfortably buy breakouts or pullbacks, but right now, I just don’t know. Big down one day, big up the next. I could make a case for a move in both directions, and when this is the case, I’m less active. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
eBay (EBAY -0.51%) jumped over 10% in pre-market trading after it said it will separate eBay and PayPal into independent publicly traded companies in 2015.
Toyota (TM -0.95%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Alcoa (AA -1.61%) and Century Aluminum (CENX -2.89%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at BofA/Merrill.
Kellogg (K +0.10%) was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Teekay (TK +0.72%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $90.
Walgreen (WAG -0.96%) reported Q4 EPS of 74 cents, right on consensus.
Priceline reported a 5.84% stake in Ctrip.com (CTRP -3.48%) .
Greenlight capital reported a 37.5% stake in Einstein Noah (BAGL +50.49%) .
Lone Pine Capital reported a 5.3% passive stake in Tiffany (TIF -0.79%).
Cintas (CTAS -0.48%) reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 78 cents, higher than consensus 75 cents, and then raised guidance on fiscal 2015 EPS view to $3.20-$3.29 from $3.06-$3.15, higher than consensus of $3.09.
Raytheon (RTN -0.62%) and Lockheed Martin (LMT -0.12%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Stifel.
SYNNEX (SNX +1.20%) reported Q3 EPS of $1.59, better than consensus of $1.48.
Ford (F -7.47%) says it won’t achieve 2014 profit goals, sees pre-tax profit of $6 billion, below ealier projection of $7 billion to $8 billion.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
7:45 ICSC Retail Store Sales
8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales
9:00 S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index
9:45 Chicago PMI
10:00 Consumer Confidence
10:00 State Street Investor Confidence Index
Notable earnings before today’s open: WAG
Notable earnings after today’s close: SANW
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers