Before the Open (Sep 12)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with relatively big, across-the-board losses. Hong Kong dropped more than 3%; Australia, New Zealand and South Korea lost more than 2%; Japan, China, India and Taiwan fell more than 1%. Europe is currently down across-the-board. Greece, Poland, Finland, Italy and Spain are down more than 2%; virtually every other market is down at least 1%. This includes the UK, Germany and France. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap down 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 flat. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are down.
I’m standing by what was stated in the weekly report published Sunday morning.
From a technical standpoint, the market was in good shape heading into Friday. There were very few warnings. Then news hit that induced more selling than we’ve seen in two months. Finally. Perhaps two months of very slow and quiet action will come to an end. Perhaps we’ll finally get some decent ranges and some decent week-to-week movement.
In my opinion Friday was likely overdone – although there can certainly be some follow through selling pressure early this week – but unless there’s a lot more bad news, I think the downside is limited. The market was too strong technically to just fall apart.
Don’t fight with the market. Don’t argue with the market. Having an opinion is fine, but don’t lose much money fighting for what you believe. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Marathon Oil (MRO -6.39%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse.
Praxair (PX -2.62%) slid nealy 3% in pre-market trading after it said it ended merger talks with Linde AG.
HP Inc. (HPQ -3.83%) lost 1% in pre-market trading after it said it bought Samsung Electronics printer business for about $1.05 billion.
AutoZone (AZO -0.95%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS with a 12-month target price of $825.
Target (TGT -0.66%) is down nearly 3% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Cowen.
Colgate (CL -2.92%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch with a price target of $80.
Tronc (TRNC +0.24%) said it is in active discussions over Gannet’s takeover bid of about $673 million.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission urged users of Samsung Electronics Note 7 smartphone to turn them off immediately and stop charging them due to fire risk
Southwest Airlines (LUV -3.66%) said it reached a tentative agreement with its flight attendants.
United Continental Holdings (UAL -3.51%) fell nearly 1% in after-hours trading after it said it sees full-year CASM ex-items 2.5%-3.5%. higher than the 2%-3% increase it said it saw in July, citing ratification of the flight attendants contract.
American Airlines Group (AAL -2.19%) announced that it had reached a tentative pact with the transport workers union.
Swift Transportation (SWFT +4.61%) slid over 1% in after-hours trading after it announced that it will take a charge on the retirement of CEO Jerry Moyes.
CoLucid Pharmaceuticals (CLCD +5.91%) fell nearly 1% in after-hours trading after it priced a 3.25 million share secondary offering.
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:00 Fed’s Lockhart speech
1:00 PM Results of $24B, 3-Year Note Auction
1:00 PM Results of $20B, 10-Year Note Auction
1:00 PM Fed’s Kashkari speech
1:00 PM Fed’s Reserve Gov. Lael Brainard speech
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers