Before the Open (Sep 26)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Japan, Hong Kong, China, India and Taiwan fell more than 1%. Europe is currently down across-the-board. Turkey is down more than 4%; the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Poland, Spain and Italy are down more than 1%. Futures in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.
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The dollar is down. Oil is up, copper is down. Gold is flat; silver is down. Bonds are up.
Minus the news out this morning, I don’t have anything to add to the comments made in the LB Weekly, published over the weekend. The market is doing well from several angles, and for now I don’t have reason to abandon my SPX 2300-2400 target. Minor news items can disrupt things in the near term, but I think it’ll take a major news item change the overall trend.
There’s lots of news out this morning…
Germany’s Angela Merkel will not be offering any state assistance to Deutsche Bank (DB) while it battles the US Justice Department regarding its activities leading up to the Financial Crisis. The stock is down another 6% today and is at an all-time low.
There’s a big gathering of OPEC nations and Russia to discuss oil. Oil has been volatile, so news can suddenly cause a big move in either direction the next couple days.
Mario Draghi is scheduled to deliver his quarterly testimony today to the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will debate for the first time tonight. Will it be a circus or a respectable debate? The candidates were close after the conventions. Then Hillary pulled away with a big lead, but that lead has almost vanished with her health issues being made more public. If the candidates were stocks, they’d be high beta and unpredictable, so a good or bad performance tonight can swing the election (for now) and also influence Wall Street.
The Nas, Nas 100 and Russell 2000 hit new highs last week. The other indexes are close. The breadth indicators are doing well. The quality and quantity of trading set-ups has improved. I like the market overall. More after the open.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Disney (DIS -0.15%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Drexel Hamilton LLC.
Twitter (TWTR +21.42%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at Oppenheimer & Co.
Oshkosh (OSK -10.58%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Credit Suisse.
NetApp was (NTAP -0.83%) upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Cross Research with a 12-month target price of $45.
CBOE Holdings agreed to buy BATS Global Markets (BATS +19.86%) for $3.2 billion in a cash and stock transaction.
Chemtura (CHMT +2.29%) surged 17% in pre-market trading after the company was acquired by Lanxess AG for about $2.1 billion.
Sally Beauty Holdings (SBH +0.57%) climbed 5% in after-hours trading after it was announced that it will replace RR Donnelley in the S&P MidCap 400 Index at the close of trading Tuesday, September 27.
RR Donnelley & Sons (RRD -1.15%) jumped over 5% in after trading after it was announced that it will replace Sizmek in the S&P SmallCap 600 at the close of trading Tuesday, September 27.
Smith & Wesson (SWHC -0.18%) slid over 2% in after-hours trading after it said its proposal for the U.S. Army’s Modular Handgun System (MHS) was not selected to advance to the next phase of competition.
Rowan Cos, Plc (RDC -4.98%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse.
Today’s Economic Calendar
9:30 Fed’s Kashkari: “Too Big to Fail”
10:00 New Home Sales
10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
1:00 PM Results of $26B, 2-Year Note Auction
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers