Before the Open (Jan 21)

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied 4.7%, and Hong Kong, Australia and Malaysia gained more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly down. Switzerland and Greece are down more than 2%; Germany and Austria are down 0.7-0.8%. Russia is up 1.7%. Futures here in the States point towards a gap down open for the cash market.

The dollar is down. Oil is up, copper down. Gold and silver are up.
Yesterday the S&P gappped up…sold off 24 points to go well into negative territory…and then rallied 20 and closed up a couple points. The bulls will argue the ability of the market is rally off early weakness is a good sign, but volume fell off and the small caps were weak.
And the market’s leading groups right now are: gold, utilities and REITs??? Not exactly the groups you want leading the market, so I’m skeptical. Energy is of course very weak, and financials have taken big hits lately. My bottoms-up approach says be careful and don’t expect too much of a bounce here…or at the very least do not expect a full-blown rally. The internals just don’t support it right now.
The coast is not clear. The S&P has traded in a 100-point range the last 10 weeks and is unchanged over this time period. There’s nothing wrong with that…a consolidation period near the highs of a multi-year uptrend. But while the consolidation period has taken place, there’s been a lot of deterioration beneath-the-surface.
We’ve been long gold and silver for two weeks. Otherwise, not big bets right now. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Wal-Mart (WMT -0.09%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Whole Foods Market (WFM -0.29%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Sterne Agee.
Lowe’s (LOW -2.16%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Colgate-Palmolive (CL -0.30%) and McDermott (MDR -5.49%) were both downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at UBS.
Exxon Mobil (XOM -0.03%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Wells Fargo.
Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB -1.20%) reported Q4 EPS of 42 cents, right on consensus.
US Bancorp (USB -0.75%) reported Q4 EPS of 78 cents, higher than consensus of 77 cents.
UnitedHealth Group (UNH -0.14%) reported Q4 EPS of $1.55, better than consensus of $1.50
ING Group reported an 18.9% passive stake in Voya Financial (VOYA -0.87%) .
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -6.28%) reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 0 cents, weaker than consensus of 1 cent.
Woodward (WWD +0.57%) reported Q1 EPS of 66 cents, well above consensus of 46 cents.
Celestica (CLS -0.88%) reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 23 cents, less than consensus of 24 cents.
International Business Machines (IBM -0.12%) fell over 2% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 EPS of $5.81, higher than consensus of $5.41, but then lowered guidance on fiscal 2015 EPS to $15.75-$16.50, below consensus of $16.53.
Netflix (NFLX +3.40%) jumped over 15% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 EPS of 72 cents, well above consensus of 45 cents.
Cree (CREE +4.66%) climbed nearly 4% in after-hours trading after it reported Q2 EPS of 33 cents, much better than consensus of 22 cents.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
8:30 Housing Starts
8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales
Notable earnings before today’s open: AMTD, APH, ASML, FITB, NTRS, UNH, USB, VIVO
Notable earnings after today’s close: AXP, BGG, BXS, CBU, CCI, DFS, DLB, EBAY, EWBC, FFIV, KMI, LOGI, PLXS, RJF, SLM, SNDK, TCBI, URI, XLNX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers