Before the Open (Mar 14)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up across the board. Japan, Hong Kong, China and Indonesia rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Spain and Portugal are up more than 1%. Russia is down. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
The dollar is up. Oil is down, copper is up. Gold is down, silver is up. Bonds are mixed.
I don’t have much to add to my comments made over the weekend in the weekly report. The market is on a 4-week win streak…the S&P is 210 points off its low and closed above its 200-day MA for the first time since late-December (which as the last top)…the breadth indicators have done better on this rally than they did during the October rally.
The market looks to be in decent shape – not fantastic shape, but definitely good shape.
But don’t get lazy here. We aren’t in an environment where you can just get long and turn your computer off. We’ve had many good trades the last few weeks, but the easy money has been made. Things will get much tougher going forward. I think there’s more to go…but it’ll be much harder.
There’s an FOMC meeting on Wednesday, so for the next few days, the market won’t just trade based on supply and demand. It’ll move based on anticipation of what the Fed may do and what they may say. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Equinix (EQIX +3.68%) was downgraded to “market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Oppenheimer.
Noble Corp. Plc (NE +1.18%) was downgraded to ‘Accumulate’ from ‘Buy’ at Seaport Global Securities.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT +1.54%) received an unsolicited purchase proposal of $76 a share, a 7.9% premium to Friday’s closing price.
Tesla Motors (TSLA +1.13%) is up 1.5% in pre-market trading after it was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Robert Baird Ltd with a 12-month price target of $300.
Cirrus Logic (CRUS +3.40%) was rated a new ‘Buy” at Needham & Cp. with a 12-month price target of $50.
Rowan Cos. (RDC +4.11%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Seaport Global Securities.
Epizyme (EPZM +3.93%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at HC Wainwright & Co, LLC with a 12-month price target of $25.
Quanex Building Products (NX +4.49%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Wedbush with a 12-month price target of $23.
Chemours (CC +2.84%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs.
Comerica (CMA +3.27%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Sell’ at CLSA.
CyberArk Software Ltd. (CYBR +2.91%) was upgraded to a ‘Buy’ at Summit Research.
HCA Holdings (HCA +3.81%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight” from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan Chase with a price target of $85.
Constellation Brands (STZ +1.11%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ at SunTrust with a price target of $170.
Autoliv (ALV +2.39%) was downgraded to ‘Sell’ from ‘Neutral’ at Evercore.
Earnings and Economic Numbers from seekingalpha.com…
Today’s Economic Calendar
No events scheduled.
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers