Before the Open (Feb 2)

Good morning. Happy Tuesday.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. China rallied 2.3%, but Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea did poorly. Europe is currently mostly down. London, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Spain, Italy and Sweden are down more than 1%. 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 up. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are up.
We entered this week with a positive near-term bias. Yesterday the opening gap down got bought. Will today’s gap down also get bought? We’ll see. This isn’t exactly the robust surge off the bottom one would expect if a bottom was really in place. We got a pop off the bottom and a jump last Friday. Otherwise it’s been a lot of back and forth movement and a lot of overlapping candles. It more closely resembles the August bottom that required a test of the low, not the September bottom that went vertical for a month and went for more than 200 SPX points.
Oil has also been a disappointment. It moved up to 35 bucks but as of today’s open will already be back down to the $30.60 area. Double bottom coming? Or was the bounce just a bounce within a downtrend?
Not easy. The big money is made riding the big trends, and right now we don’t have a big trend. The S&P is unchanged going back 18 months; the small caps are unchanged going back 2 years.
Near term positive bias is waning. Overall bias remains to the downside. This will remain the case unless we get a robust move back to the high.
Oh, and Google is now the most valuable public company in the world. And it’s less than 20 years old. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Alphabet (GOOGL +1.24%) is up over 3% in pre-market trading after it reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $8.67, well above consensus of $8.09, as Q4 paid clicks climbed +31% y/y, higher than consensus of +22.4% y/y.
Down Chemical (DOW +1.38%) reported Q4 EPS of 91 cents, higher than consensus of 69 cents.
UGI Corp. (UGI +0.32%) reported Q1 adjusted EPS of 64 cents, below consensus of 70 cents.
Aflac (AFL -2.50%) rose over 1% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 operating EPS of $1.56, above consensus of $1.48.
Rent-A-Center (RCII -2.50%) slumped over 10% in after-hours trading after it reported Q3 revenue of $793.8 million, less than consensus of $874.8 million, and said it sees 2016 core U.S. revenue down -4% to -6%, weaker than consensus of +1%.
Flowserve (FLS -0.70%) lowered guidance on fiscal 2016 adjusted EPS to $2.40-$2.75, weaker than consensus of $2.95.
Mattel (MAT -3.01%) gained over 5% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 adjusted EPS all items of 63 cents, above consensus of 61 cents.
Leggett & Platt (LEG +0.17%) slid almost 4% in after-hours trading after it said it sees 2016 sales of $2.9 billion-$4.1 billion, below consensus of $4.17 billion.
Anadarko Petroleum (APC -2.15%) climbed over 4% in after-hours trading after it reported a Q4 adjusted EPS loss of -57 cents, a smaller loss than consensus of -$1.10.
Plantronics (PLT -0.16%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.
Hain Celestial (HAIN +1.73%) reported Q2 adjusted EPS of 57 cents, higher than consensus of 54 cents.
PVH Corp. (PVH -0.29%) rose over 6% in after-hours trading after it raised guidance on 2016 adjusted EPS to above $7.00 from a December estimate of $6.90-$7.00, above consensus of $6.96.
Rayonier Advanced Materials (RYAM +2.43%) fell over 7% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 revenue of $242 million, below consensus of $245.8 million.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
Auto sales
8:30 Gallup US ECI
8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales
1:00 PM Fed’s George: Monetary policy and Economic Policy
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers