Before the Open (Oct 17)

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a lean to the downside. China, Hong Kong, Australia, India and New Zealand closed down. Japan, Indonesia and South Korea closed up. Europe is currently mostly down, but losses aren’t very big. The UK, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Denmark and Norway led to the downside. The Czech Republic had a good day. Futures in the States point towards a slight 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 down a small amount. Oil and copper are up. Gold is flat; silver is up. Bonds are up.
As is typically the case on Monday’s I don’t have anything to add to the comments made over the weekend in LB Weekly.
If left alone, I see more reason to think the market’s next move will be down, not up. There are warnings from the breadth indicators and from the general success of recent set-ups.
But the market isn’t going to be left alone because this is an election year, and I’d be completely shocked if the government and the Fed didn’t do everything they could to at least prop the market up until the election.
If this is true – that the market should briefly correct but won’t – one of two scenarios is likely to unfold. 1) Enough time will pass to allow the market to correct with time and it’ll simply be back to business when the hand-holding ceases after the election or 2) the need to correct will result in pent up pressure which will result in an even bigger correction down the road.
Stock headlines from barchart.com…
Dunkin’ Brands Group (DNKN +0.94%) was downgraded to ‘Sector Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ on valuation by RBC Capital Markets.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM -0.32%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Independent Research GmbH with a 12-month price target of $77.
Whirlpool (WHR -0.02%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at MKM Partners with a 12-month target price of $176.
Groupon (GRPN +2.24%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Wedbush.
Marathon Oil (MRO -1.35%) was downgraded to ‘Equal-weght’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays with a target price of $17.
Newmont Mining (NEM -1.67%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal-weight’ at Barclays with a target price of $45.
Qualys (QLYS +0.53%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at DA Davidson with a 12-month target price of $47.
GameStop (GME -0.35%) said it expects to sell out of PlayStation Virtual Reality goggles and has asked Sony for more of the goggles.
Leven Capital boosted its stake in Fluidigm (FLDM -4.08%) to 25.2% from 19.6% and is the largest holder in the company.
Quotient Ltd. (QTNT +2.42%) jumped 5% in after-hours trading after it secured $120 million in debt financing in a private placement of 12% senior secured notes due 2023.
People with knowledge of the matter said CBS (CBS -0.24%) is close to hiring JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to advise it on a potential merger with Viacom (VIA -0.25%) .
Quality Systems (QSII +2.50%) climbed over 4% in after-hours trading after DealReporter said it had hired UBS earlier this year to look for potential buyers.
Today’s Economic Calendar
8:30 Empire State Mfg Survey
9:15 Industrial Production
Today’s Earnings here
Other…
today’s upgrades/downgrades from briefing.com
this week’s Earnings
this week’s Economic Numbers