Before the Open (Jul 17)

Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Options Expiration Day.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a lean to the upside. China rallied 3.5%, and Hong Kong moved up 1%. South Korea fell 0.5%. Europe is currently mixed, and there are no big movers. Austria, Norway, Finland and Sweden are doing the best. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
VIDEO: Leavitt Brothers Overview
The dollar is down. Oil is down, copper is down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are mixed.
Yesterday the Nas 100 and S&P 100 moved to new highs. The S&P 500 is now 80 points off its low and is within 10 points of its own new high. The Nas is within one point of its high. The small and mid caps are lagging some.
I said at the end of last week: In the face of lots of bad news, if the bears couldn’t take over and push the market down, the path of least resistance was up. Fortunately this happened at the same time many technical indicators hit extreme levels, so it was a 1-2 punch of technical analysis and psychology that set the stage for the current move.
GOOGL will open up about 80 points today. It’ll join NFLX, AMZN, FB, EBAY, TSLA and others which have hit all-time highs recently.
The market is on a roll. At the end of last week I switched my bias to the upside and was hoping for a solid bounce. New highs were certainly possible, but I wasn’t counting them – not in this up and down market where all rallies have gotten sold. The internals have moved up but are nowhere near their highs, so there’s still more room to move.
Don’t get cocky. Be long but don’t get lazy managing positions. Stick with what has worked. It’s okay to hope for big moves because that’s how the big money is made, but plan for a much lessor situation.
Today is options expiration – it’s become a meaningless day…but you never know when it’ll start acting as a turning point again…something to keep in mind.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
General Electric (GE +1.01%) reported Q2 EPS of 28 cents, right on consensus.
Comerica (CMA +0.74%) reported Q2 EPS of 73 cents, below consensus of 75 cents.
Sun Trust Banks (STI +0.20%) reported Q2 EPS of 86 cents, higher than consensus of 81 cents.
Honeywell International (HON -0.26%) reported Q2 EPS of $1.51, better than consensus of $1.49.
WW Grainger (GWW +0.68%) reported Q2 EPS of $3.27, above consensus of $3.05.
BofA/Merrill Lynch downgrades Best Buy (BBY +1.39%) two notches to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Buy.’
Reuters reports that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) fined a Barclays (BCS +0.63%) unit $800,000 for violations regarding how the bank reported stock trades over a more than two-year period.
Celanese (CE +0.33%) reported Q2 adjusted EPS of $1.58, higher than consensus of $1.42, and then raised guidance on fiscal 2015 adjusted EPS view to $5.70-$6.00 from $5.60-$5.90, above consensus of $5.75.
Hertz (HTZ -0.35%) surged over 15% after it said it identified accounting mistatements from fiscal years 2011-2013.
Lone Pine Capital reported a 5.7% passive stake in Charter (CHTR +1.18%) .
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -4.59%) reported a Q2 adjusted EPS loss of -17 cents, right on consensus, although Q2 revenue of $942 million was below consensus of $950.51 million.
Cintas (CTAS +0.81%) reported Q4 EPS ex-items of 86 cents, above consensus of 85 cents.
Schlumberger (SLB +0.31%) reported Q2 EPS of 88 cents, higher than consensus of 79 cents.
Mattel (MAT -1.72%) reported an unexpected Q2 adjusted EPS profit of 1 cent, better than consensus for a -4 cent loss.
Google (GOOG +3.50%) rose over 7% in after-hours trading after it reported Q2 EPS of $6.99, above consensus of $6.71.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s economic calendar:
8:30 Housing Starts
8:30 Consumer Price Index
9:55 Reuters/UofM Consumer Sentiment
Notable earnings before today’s open: ALV, CMA, ERIC, FHN, GE, GWW, HON, JBHT, KSU, PGR, STI, SYF
Notable earnings after today’s close: none
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers