Before the Open (Oct 20)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up across-the-board. Japan rallied 4%, followed by Taiwan (up 1.77%), South Korea (up 1.55%), India (up 1.23%) New Zealand (up 0.99%) and Australia (up 0.9%).Europe is currently mostly down. London, Germany, France, Amsterdam and Norway are down more than 1%; Spain, Italy, Stockholm and Switzerland are also down a bunch. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.

The dollar is flat. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are up.
This is a big week. We’ve gotten a ton of movement lately, and right now the indexes are sitting in no-man’s land between last week’s low (below) and previous support (above), and there isn’t any strong support or resistance nearby. Considering the volatility, there isn’t much to stop the market from moving big in either direction.
In the near term I favor the upside, but long term I lean to the downside.
Many technical indicators have moved to extreme levels and are positioned to support a rally attempt. The AD line, AD volume line, new lows and others are ready to go. Others, such as the bullish percent indexes, have dropped to their lowest levels in a couple years but are still above levels that would be considered extreme. The market has plenty of technical support if it wanted to continue up, but it didn’t completely washout like it did in 2011. It doesn’t have to…I’m just saying things didn’t get as bad as it did back then…which is typically what you want.
Anything goes right now. Let’s see what happens. I’m long but am not willing to give positions much wiggle room. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
International Business Machines (IBM +1.23%) reported Q3 EPS of $3.68, well below consensus of $4.32.
Halliburton (HAL +2.79%) reported Q3 EPS of $1.19, better than consensus of $1.10.
Hasbro (HAS -0.66%) reported Q3 EPS of $1.46, higher than consensus of $1.45.
E-Trade (ETFC +1.21%) was upgraded to ‘Conviction Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Freeport McMoRan (FCX +0.33%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Sell’ at Citigroup.
Newmont Mining (NEM -1.41%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup.
Cliffs Natural (CLF -8.00%) downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup.
Swift Transport (SWFT +4.02%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup.
American International Group (AIG +2.75%) rose over 1% in pre-market trading after Deutsche Bank AG upgraded the stock to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold.’
Longview Asset reported a 9.97% stake in General Dynamics (GD +2.56%) .
RA Capital reported a 8.3% passive stake in TG Therapeutics (TGTX unch) .
Advanced Technology Ventures VIII reported an 11.8% stake in Calithera Biosciences (CALA +7.13%) .
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
10:00 Fed’s Powell: “Fed Perspectives on Community Banking”
12:00 PM Daniel Tarullo speech
Notable earnings before today’s open: BTU, CBU, GCI, GPC, HAL, HAS, LII, NVR, PETS, PHG, SAP, VFC, VRX
Notable earnings after today’s close: AAPL, BRO, BXS, CDNS, CE, CMG, CYS, ELS, EWBC, GLF, HLX, HSTM, HXL, IBM, ILMN, KALU, PCH, PKG, RCII, RMBS, STLD, TXN, UCTT, WERN, ZION
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers