Before the Open (Apr 20)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Hong Kong and India dropped around 2%; China fell 1.6%; Singapore, Australia and New Zealand also dropped noticeably. Europe is currently mostly up. Germany, Amsterdam, Austria and Stockholm are up more than 1%; Russia and Greece are also doing well. Futures here in the States point towards a relatively big gap up open for the cash market.

S&P Select – Week in Review
The dollar is up. Oil is down, copper is down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are down.
We finished last week with the S&P in the middle of its range…two months and no directional progress. Rallies continue to get sold, dips continue to get bought. No move lasts long, and in most cases it’s better to shoot for lots of little wins instead of bigger moves.
The Chinese central bank cut the reserve requirement ratio by 100 basis points to 18.5% in hopes of combating their slow growth. Odd, because their stock market has been on fire. They’re essentially admitting the movement of their market is not a reflection of the movement of their economy.
The Saudi Oil Minister said production would stay near 10 million barrels. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Saudi Arabia has stated many times they will keep production high, and they don’t care if oil drops to 10 bucks/barrel.
S&P futures are about 20 points off Friday’s low and 10 points off its close. In fact they’re very close to Friday’s open, so all the intraday losses have been recaptured.
I don’t think the environment right now is very good for swing trading. Now that oil is resting and unsure what it wants to do next and a new group has not emerged as a leader going forward, we don’t have many good set ups to play. That’s what several months of consolidation will do. Other than a little extra push at the end of February, the market has gone nowhere for many months.
Patience is definitely needed right now.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Morgan Stanley (MS -1.63%) reported Q1 EPS of 85 cents, higher than consensus of 78 cents.
Halliburton (HAL -1.97%) reported Q1 EPS of 49 cents, better than consensus of 36 cents.
SunTrust Banks (STI -1.71%) reported Q1 EPS of 78 cents, above conensus of 72 cents.
Nokia (NOK -1.93%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Jefferies.
Marathon Oil (MRO -0.59%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley.
General Mills (GIS -0.25%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Sell’ at Goldman SAchs.
Colgate-Palmolive (CL -1.14%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
HSBC (HSBC -1.25%) was upgraded to ‘Conviction Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Symantec (SYMC -0.25%) was upgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Underperform’ at Jefferies.
Alibaba (BABA -2.57%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Summit Research with a price target of $97.
Hasbro (HAS -0.24%) reported Q1 EPS of 21 cents, well above consensus of 7 cents.
Costco (COST -1.73%) rose over 1% in pre-market trading after the retailer struck a deal with Visa and Citigroup under which its acceptance costs for credit-card payments will be about zero.
Michael Kors Holdings Limited (KORS -0.74%) fell 1% in pre-market trading after Mizuho Financial Group cut it srecommendation on the stock to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy.’
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
Notable earnings before today’s open: BOH, CBU, CHKP, HAL, HAS, LII, MS, MTB, RCL, STI
Notable earnings after today’s close: BMI, BRO, BXS, CNI, ELS, FTNT, GLF, HLX, HSTM, HXL, IBM, IEX, LRCX, PKG, RCI, RLI, RMBS, SANM, STLD, UCTT, WAL, WWD, ZION
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers