Good morning. Happy Friday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied more than 4% (combined with yesterday, it just completed its biggest 2-day rally in many years), and Hong Kong rallied 2.1%. Indonesia also did moderately well. Europe is currently posting big, across-the-board gains. France and Spain are up more than 3%; Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Belgium and Portugal are up more than 2%; London, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Prague, Poland and Turkey are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap up open for the cash market.
Podcast with Brandon at Trading Story
The dollar is down. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are down.
Greece remains front and center. The Greek Prime Minister seems to have met most of the demands its creditors have made. They agree to spending cuts, pension cuts and tax increases in exchange for 53.3B euro in bailout money. Oddly, this is exactly what Greek voters said “no” to in the referendum last weekend. They’ll never pay all this back. This just kicks the proverbial can down the road.
After suspending trading in three-quarters of listed companies and putting limits on selling, China has just completed its biggest 2-day rally in several years (better than 10%). It lets them breathe in the near term, but there are many companies worse off than US-based dot com bubble casualties from 15 years ago.
This week we’ve gotten two big gap ups and two big gap downs and a handful of directional moves (in both directions). Day traders have been in heaven, swing traders have been frustrated. The situation between Greece and its creditors is the main reason, and while I don’t think the issue has been solved, Greece may be removed from the headlines, and the market can somewhat go back to normal – whatever that is.
I’m still keeping trades short term. Swing for singles…little wins add up over time. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Costco (COST -0.32%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Perform’ at Oppenheimer with a $160 price target.
Heineken (HEINY +1.96%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at CitiGroup.
IntercontinentalExchange (ICE +1.16%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
Transocean (RIG -0.66%) and Diamond Offshore (DO +1.74%) were both downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Hold’ at Clarkson Capital.
Ameriprise (AMP +0.92%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs.
Mosaic (MOS -0.86%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at Atlantic Equities.
J.M. Smucker (SJM -0.15%) announced a 4.92 million share common stock offering.
Gartner reported that Q2 worldwide PC shipments were down 9.5% y/y to 68.4 million units.
Carl Icahn reported a 6.51% stake in Tegna (TGNA +2.61%).
Soros Fund Management reported a 5.32% passive stake in Cypress Semiconductor (CY +0.09%).
Verizon (VZ -0.69%) coverage was resumed with a ‘Buy’ at Stifel with a price target of $60.
AT&T (T -1.15%) coverage was resumed with a ‘Buy’ at Stifel with a price target of $41.50.
Wolverine Asset Management reported an 8.8% passive stake in Viggle (VGGL unch).
The Gap (GPS -1.56%) reported June same-store-sales were down -1.0% y/y.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
10:00 Wholesale Trade
12:00 PM Janet Yellen speech
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