Before the Open (May 21)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. China and Australia led, followed by Indonesia. Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea lagged. Europe currently leans to the downside, and no market has moved 1% from its unchanged level. Italy, Germany, France, Prague and Austria are down; Russia is up. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
List of ETFs –> here
The dollar is down. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold is down, silver is up. Bonds are up.
Tale of two markets yesterday. There was a plunge out of the gate and then a quick recovery. There was a jump after the FOMC minutes, then everything was given back. Besides those two moves, the market was quiet – par for the course…most of the movement takes place in short bursts and otherwise the market grinds in place.
The market is set up to leg up, but it just can’t get out of its own way. Yellen speaks tomorrow, and then we have a 3-day weekend. Perhaps Wall St. wants more of a runway, perhaps it doesn’t want a breakout attempt interrupted, so it’s waiting. I don’t know. That’s a bad excuse because my experience is the market does what it wants, and time of year doesn’t matter much. In fact it’s when nobody expects a move to materialize that it happens.
Let’s keep grinding this thing out. Maybe we get sideways chop for the entire summer. You never know. We don’t get to call the market, we can only play the hand we’re dealt.
Keep trades short term and no big bets. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Dollar Tree (DLTR -1.66%) lowered guidance on Q2 EPS ex-acquisition costs to 63 cents-68 cents, below consensus of 70 cents.
Bon-Ton Stores (BONT -1.49%) reported a Q1 EPS loss of -$1.74, a larger loss than consensus of -$1.56.
Omnicare (OCR +2.48%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Cowen.
Citigroup maintains a ‘Buy’ rating on Netflix (NFLX +0.82%) and raised its price target on the stock to $722 from $584.
Vodafone (VOD +2.60%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Reduce’ at Nomura.
Nike (NKE -0.03%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Jefferies with a price target of $120.
Best Buy (BBY -3.43%) jumped over 9% in pre-market trading after reported Q1 EPS of 37 cents, better than consensus of 29 cents.
CVS Health (CVS -1.03%) agreed to acquire Omnicare (OCR) for $98 a share.
Salesforce.com (CRM -1.85%) rallied more than 6% in after-hours trading on positive earnings.
Williams-Sonoma (WSM -0.43%) rallied 4% in after-hours trading on positive earnings.
NetApp (NTAP -0.06%) fell 8% in after-hours trading on disappointing earnings and then was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
9:45 PMI Manufacturing Index Flash
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Philly Fed Business Outlook
10:00 Existing Home Sales
10:00 Leading Indicators
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 Kansas City Fed Mfg Survey
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: AAP, BAH, BBY, BKE, BONT, BRC, DCI, DLTR, KIRK, MNRO, NM, PDCO, QSII, SMRT, TSL, TTC
Notable earnings after today’s close: ACXM, ARO, BRCD, GMAN, GPS, HPQ, INTU, JMEI, LGF, MRVL, NWY, OESX, ROST, TFM
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers