Before the Open (Aug 1)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Indonesia moved up almost 3%; Taiwan and Hong Kong did better than 1%; Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea also did well. Europe currently leans to the downside. Turkey is up more than 1%; but France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Italy are down. Futures in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.
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LB Weekly – the indexes, the breadth indicators, a look at the big picture
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The dollar is up. Oil is down; copper is up. Gold is down; silver is up. Bonds are down.
As is typically the case on a Monday morning, I don’t have anything to add to the comments made in the weekly report published over the weekend. The market has done very little the last couple weeks – a tough task considering both marjor political parties in the US had their conventions, an FOMC meeting took place, and over 1000 companies released earnings. Yet the market just sat their in a tiny range and made no attempt to move up or down much. I’m calling it a consolidation pattern within an uptrend and remain on board with the S&P rallying up to 2300-2400.
The wall of worry is growing. Goldman Sachs has cut its 3-month rating on equities to “underweight.”
Gold and silver stocks continue to look good.
Oil bounced off its 200-day MA last week. This is a key time, but I’m not entirely convinced the short-term down trend is over. There will need to be some follow through for me to be convinced.
That’s it for now. The weekly report has everything I want to say. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
SolarCity (SCTY -0.67%) jumped over 7% in pre-market trading after Reuters reported that the company may merge with Tesla Motors as soon as today.
Cubic (CUB +0.20%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Needham & Co.
First Business Financial Services (FBIZ -3.15%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Sandler O’Neill.
GNC Holdings (GNC +0.64%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Wedbush.
Leggett & Platt (LEG -3.59%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.
Harley-Davidson (HOG +3.74%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at BMO Capital Markets.
Caesars Entertainment Group (CZR -1.99%) will sell its online casino games unit Playtika Ltd for $4.4 billion to an investor group led by Shanghai Giant Network Technology Co.
Apple (AAPL -0.12%) shares have “gotten too cheap” based on free cash flow and other metrics, according to Barron’s.
Publicis Groupe (PGPEF +1.01%) announced that Saatchi & Saatchi Chairman Kevin Roberts was placed on leave due to comments on gender equality.
Deutsche Bank (DB +1.43%) scored higher in bank stress tests released last Friday than in previous years.
Keycorp (KEY +0.43%) fell by -1.3% in after-hours trading on Friday after news that the First Niagra Financial Group.
Today’s Economic Calendar
9:45 PMI Manufacturing Index
10:00 ISM Manufacturing Index
10:00 Construction Spending
2:00 PM Gallup US Consumer Spending Measure
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers