Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a lean to the downside. Japan, Singapore and Australia lost more than 1%; Indonesia and Taiwan gained more than 1%. Europe currently leans to the downside. Austria, Greece and Finland are down 0.9% or more; France, Germany, Spain and Portugal are also down. Prague, Turkey and Denmark are up. Several African and Middle Eastern countries are on the move. Nigeria, Egypt and Qatar are up more than 2%; South Africa and Israel are down more than 2%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.
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The dollar is down a small amount. Oil is down, copper is down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are up.
The market is coming off an historic week that saw the the S&P 500 down 100 and the Dow down 1000 early Monday morning, but all the indexes posted gains for the week. Huge movement. Lots of intraday swing. Some massive gaps.
The VIX experienced its biggest 5-day spike in history.
Oil enjoyed is biggest single day gain (Thursday) since March 2009 and one of its biggest 2-day gains (Thursday & Friday) in history.
Now the investment community is split. Some panicked and sold Monday and Tuesday and are now afraid the market will move up and never give them a chance to re-enter at the same or better levels. Others wish they would have seen the signs building over the latter of the summer and sold ahead of time. They are thankful the market bounced but are looking to scale back.
So some think the market may crash again, others that it will melt up.
The media is split too, although they generally have a bullish bias. Some outlets tell investors to continue with their long term investing plan and buy and don’t worry about short term noise, others predict a big drop.
What do I see?
The market has decent upside momentum, and given FOMO (fear of missing out), I expect more up in the near term. But unless the indicators I discussed in the Index Report over the weekend also move up with force, we’re going to get another big move down.
Big movement, high volatility, big gaps, big intraday swings – expect all to continue. The character and personality of the market has changed. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
United Technologies (UTX -0.03%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays.
Intel (INTC +2.53%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Northland.
Twitter (TWTR +1.40%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at SunTrust.
Morgan Stanley (MS -0.73%) and Goldman Sachs (GS -0.77%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Evercore ISI.
J.C. Penney (JCP +5.55%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
CNOOC (CEO -1.67%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at BofA/Merrill Lynch.
Southern Copper (SCCO +1.56%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan Chase.
Stanley Black & Decker (SWK -0.23%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Macquarie.
Baidu (BIDU +0.05%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Jefferies.
Freeport McMoRan (FCX +3.04%) , which has fallen over 70% in the past year, looks oversold, according to Barron’s.
Barron’s said that With its shares down about 50% from all-time highs, Whole Foods Market (WFM -0.88%) looks cheap.
Kopp Investment Advisors reported a 16.1% stake in Superconductor Technologies (SCON unch).
Apollo Principal Holdings reported a 5.7% stake in RCS Capital (RCAP unch).
Integrated Core Strategies reported a 4.7% passive stake in Whiting Petroleum (WLL +5.07%).
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
9:45 Chicago PMI
10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
3:00 Farm Prices
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers