Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. China dropped 3.5%; Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand dropped 0.7 – 0.9%. Taiwan rallied 0.8%. Europe is currently mixed, and there aren’t many notable movers. Belgium is down more than 1%; Italy and Lithuania are up more than 1%. Everything else is close to home. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
Leavitt Brothers video overview
The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are down.
If there was a “most interesting chart” right now, it’d be oil. Crude has been consolidating for about two months and is currently being squeezed by resistance at $62 and support at its 50-day MA. Looking inside the group, there aren’t many stocks that are sitting right at resistance ready to move. In fact using a bottoms-up approach (where a bias is formed by looking at individual components instead of broader indexes or ETF) paints a neutral-to-negative picture. I know crude is a commodity and oil stocks are operating companies, but so far it appears that the stocks need crude to breakout. Staying in consolidation mode isn’t sufficient for most stocks in the group.
The S&P is unchanged since February. There have been no directional moves that have lasted long or traveled far. Very simply put, adjustments have needed to be made. Instead of shooting for 10-20% moves, be happy with 5-10%. Yes there are some outliers, but for the most part, swinging for singles instead of home runs has been the way to go. Take what the market gives you. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Accenture (ACN -0.49%) reported Q3 adjusted EPS of $1.30, higher than consensus of $1.23.
Eli Lilly (LLY -0.50%) and AT&T (T -0.36%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at BofA/Merril Lynch.
Office Depot (ODP -2.41%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Telsey Advisory.
Netflix (NFLX -0.38%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Citigroup.
CenturyLink (CTL -2.06%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Finish Line (FINL +0.82%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at B. Riley.
Amazon.com (AMZN -1.15%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Evercore ISI.
Marathon Oil (MRO unch) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS.
Chesapeake Energy (CHK -1.95%) and Murphy Oil (MUR +0.30%) were both downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS.
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG -0.84%) was initiated with an ‘Overweight’ at Barclays with a price target of $575.
Cree (CREE -1.55%) fell over 5% in after-hours trading after it lowered guidance on Q4 revenue to approximately $375 million from $420 million-$440 million, below consensus of $430.82 million.
Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY -0.58%) reported Q1 EPS of 93 cents, below consensus of 94 cents.
Steelcase (SCS unch) reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 17 cents, better than consensus of 15 cents.
Herman Miller (MLHR +0.77%) reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 47 cents, higher than consensus of 41 cents.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 Personal Income and Outlays
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
9:45 PMI Services Index Flash
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 Kansas City Fed Mfg Survey
1:00 PM Results of $29B, 7-Year Note Auction
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Notable earnings before today’s open: ACN, BKS, CMC, LNN, MEI, SJR, WGO
Notable earnings after today’s close: MU, NKE, SNX
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers