Before the Open (Aug 17)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets leaned to the downside. Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore dropped more than 1%; Hong Kong, India and South Korea were also weak. China and New Zealand did well. Europe currently leans to the upside, but there’s very little movement. Greece and Portugal are doing well. Turkey is weak. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
VIDEO overview of the Leavitt Brothers service…here
The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are up.
We enter the new week with with my bias still to the downside but some of the indicators having stopped their deterioration. For example, the percentage of stocks above their 200-day MAs has held up lately. It’s not moving up, but it has stopped falling. So I can’t report that it’s getting better, just that it’s not continuing to get worse. There are others acting the same way. If you’re bullish, it’s a sliver of hope, but my bias is still to the downside. There’s work to be done.
The big news announcement this week will come on Wednesday when the FOMC minutes are released. After the June meeting was removed as a possible time rates would increase, September was immediately put in focus. The Fed minutes will give us hints. Some want rates up now – they’ve wanted rates up for a while. Others say not until 2016.
Otherwise that’s it for now. Some of the indexes are still in consolidation mode, others are moving down. There has been lots of movement, lots of big gaps, lots of sudden reversals, and in the end the market is mostly flat over the last six months. That’s not bad considering all the news that has needed to be absorbed. But we don’t trade that long term time frame. We trad either the short term or intermediate term. Short term anything goes. Intermediate term my bias will be to the downside until the internals improve. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Micron (MU -4.24%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wedbush.
Wal-Mart (WMT +0.37%) coverage was transitioned with an ‘Overweight’ at Stephens with a price target of $90.
The Fresh Market (TFM +1.33%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at BMO Capital.
Cisco (CSCO +1.15%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.
Tesla (TSLA +0.26%) jumped over 4% in pre-market trading after Morgan Stanley raised its price target on the stock to $465 from $280.
W.R. Grace (GRA +1.78%) was upgraded to ‘Conviction Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman Sachs with a $119 price target.
Copa Holdings (CPA -2.52%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Cowen.
Primerica (PRI +1.94%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Jefferies.
NetApp (NTAP +0.42%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Hold’ at Summit Research.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM +0.50%) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette with a $77 price target.
PolyOne (POL +0.96%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
J.C. Penney (JCP +5.58%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at B. Riley with a $12.50 price target.
Pershing Square Capital confirmed it liquidate its position in Allergan (AGN -0.36%).
Billionaire investor Carl confirmed he liquidated his Netflix (NFLX -0.27%) position and has new positions in Gannet (GCI -3.26%) and Cheniere Energy (LNG +0.20%).
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Empire State Mfg Survey
10:00 NAHB Housing Market Index
10:00 E-Commerce Retail Sales
4:00 PM Treasury International Capital
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers