Before the Open (Nov 28)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Japan, China and India did well; Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia did poorly. Europe is currently mostly down. Norway is down almost 3%. Austria, Stockholm and Italy are also down noticeably. Greece is doing well. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.

The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.
Today was supposed to be a super slow day where very few on Wall St. showed up for work. Instead we got news yesterday from OPEC that is sending crude oil prices down 5-6%. Specifically OPEC did nothing. They kept their daily production numbers the same. There was some anticipation production may be dropped to help backstop falling prices, but no dice. Besides putting a lot of pressure on smaller oil companies which don’t have the bank account to weather a storm, entire countries, which desperately depend on high oil prices, are hit. Yes some smaller companies will go under, but what about Venezuela? They’re doomed. And what about Russia? Putin picked the wrong time in history to flex his muscles. He doesn’t exactly have a lot of leverage when his greatest source of revenue is falling.
XLE, an energy ETF, is down almost 5% premarket. From a market standpoint, the question is: When does the fall in oil trigger margin calls? In the near term, until oil stabilizes again and traders can assess the damage, a mini domino effect could play out. Neither the technicals or fundamentals matter if traders need to sell to cover their oil losses.
Otherwise the market is doing great. Most of the indexes are near their highs; even the small caps are at their highest level since July (on a closing basis). More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Ctrip.com (CTRP -8.48%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Vodafone (VOD +1.02%) was upgraded to ‘Key Call Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at UBS.
Piper Jaffray keeps on ‘Overweight’ rating on Amazon.com (AMZN -0.44%) and raises its price target on the stock to $400 from $350.
Total (TOT unch) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Nomura.
Lufthansa (DLAKY +0.48%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS.
Barclays (BCS +0.20%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
HSBC (HSBC +0.32%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Gabelli reported a 8.16% stake in Telephone and Data (TDS -0.44%).
Gabelli reported a 9.52% stake in U.S. Cellular (USM +1.44%).
Castle Creek reported a 9.9% stake in Summit Financial Group (SMMF -1.31%).
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
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