Before the Open (Sep 10)

Good morning. Happy Thursday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Japan, Hong Kong and Australia lost more than 2%; China and Singapore fell more than 1%. South Korea rallied 1.4%. Europe is currently mostly down. London, Germany, France, Austria, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal are down more than 1%. Latvia is up 12% – not sure what’s going on there. Futures here in the States point towards a slight down open.
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The dollar is flat. Oil is up, copper is up. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are down.
We began yesterday with a big IF. If the market could push higher, shorts may panic and cover and sideline bulls may jump in in fear they may miss a rally…and this could lead to a decent move up into the end of the week. It was a big IF. Unfortunately, other than a gap up and little follow through buying the first couple minutes, the IF part of the equation was never satisfied, so the THEN part became irrelevant.
The market remains range bound. It’s a big range…the daily ranges are big too…and moving from the top of the range to the bottom of the range is something that can happen in a couple days, unlike the summer where the market would grind up and down for a couple weeks at a time.
My overall bias remains to the downside. It’s been that way for a couple months now. We knew pressure was building at the end of the summer, and the odds heavily favored a move down. Now, with several breadth indicators failing to move much off their lows, we’re still likely to get further downside. First to test the lows, then below. But in the near term – day to day – anything goes.
If you’re a short term trader, trade the swings. If you’re an intermediate term traders, shorting rallies is your best bet. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
CBS (CBS -0.37%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.
Principal Financial Group (PFG -2.11%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
eBay (EBAY -0.61%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Cantor.
Waters (WAT -1.51%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at BofA/Merrill Lynch.
Williams (WMB -2.25%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wells Fargo.
Warren Buffett disclosed that Berkshire Hathaway acquired an additional 3.51 million shares of Phillips 66 (PSX +0.96%) between September 4 and September 9.
lululemon (LULU -2.79%) reported Q2 EPS of 34 cents, higher than consensus of 33 cents.
Western Digital (WDC -1.80%) was initiated with a ‘Sell’ at UBS with a price target of $71 and Seagate (STX +0.99%) was initiated with a ‘Sell’ with a price target of $38.
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered Brazil’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to ‘BB+’ from ‘BBB-‘ with a negative outlook.
Signet Jewelers (SIG -1.51%) was initiated with an ‘Outperform’ at RBC Capital with a price target of $160.
Coach (COH -3.62%) was initiated with an ‘Outperform’ at RBC Capital with a price target of $36.
First Solar (FSLR -2.81%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Janney Capital.
Syntel (SYNT -2.13%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at SunTrust with a price target of $52.
Con-way (CNW -1.80%) surged 30% in after-hours trading after XPO Logistics (XPO -2.38%) said they will buy the company for $3 billion.
SunEdison (SUNE -7.57%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Janney Capital with a price target of $23.
Palo Alto (PANW -0.78%) jumped over 5% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 EPS of 28 cents, higher than consensus of 25 cents.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
8:30 Import/Export Prices
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
11:00 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
1:00 PM Results of $13B, 30-Year Note Auction
4:30 Money Supply
4:30 Fed Balance Sheet
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers