Before the Open (Dec 30)

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mixed. Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand moved up; Hong Kong and India moved down. Europe currently leans to the downside. There aren’t any big movers. Germany, London, Poland and Italy are worst off. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are flat. Bonds are down.
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VIDEO: Leavitt Brothers Overview
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Two more trading days of 2015. There have been lots of ups and down, but in the end the indexes will be very little changed. The S&P is up a little right now; the Russell 2000 is down about 3.7%. There have been a handful of decent trending moves among individual stocks, but most lacked the energy and momentum to move directionally for any length of time. Buying dips and selling rallies and not getting caught on the wrong side of the commodity meltdown has been the key. It’s been a good year…as long as you recognized buy and holding and giving positions time and space to play out wasn’t going to work like it had the previous several years. On the short list of “keys to trading,” this is near the top…making sure your methodology is in concert with the market. You can’t use a trending strategy in a nontrending market, and using a range-bound system in a trend will cause you to leave a lot of money on the table. Be in sync or struggle.
2016 could be more of the same. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a range-bound market for a couple years.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Chevron (CVX +0.98%) , Exxon Mobil (XOM +0.53%) and ConocoPhillips (COP +1.23%) are all down over 1% in pre-market trading as the the price of crude tumbles -2.83%.
Freeport-McMoRan (FCX +1.75%) is down over 3% in pre-market trading on concern over the future direction of the company after Chairman Moffett stepped down on Monday.
Kura Oncology (KURA +2.19%) was rated a new ‘Outperform’ at Oppenheimer with an 18-month price target of $16.
Avangrid (AGR +2.92%) was rated a new ‘Outperform’ Wells Fargo.
New York Judge Scheindlin said that unsecured noteholders of Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC) must face trial over Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s (CZR +4.56%) guarantee liability on CEOC’s unsecured notes.
Bank of America (BAC +0.88%) slid -0.3% in after-hours trading after it said it will take a $600 million pretax writedown in Q4 as it redeems $2 billion of trust preferred securities tied to its 2009 acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
Agile Therapeutics (AGRX +5.07%) was rated a new ‘Buy’ at Noble Financial with a price target of $16.
Fairchild Semico (FCS +0.15%) rose over 2% in after-hours trading after it said it received a $21.70 a share cash offer from Party G Group for the company.
Weight Watchers International (WTW +6.96%) gained nearly 1% in after-hours trading on a continuation of Tuesday’s 7% surge after an advertisement featuring Oprah Winfrey debuted.
SunEdison (SUNE -8.56%) climbed over 3% in pre-market trading after it sold its 33% interest in its 336 mega-watt DC Solar Portfolio.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
10:00 Pending Home Sales
10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
1:00 PM Results of $29B, 7-Year Note Auction
3:00 PM Farm Prices
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers