{"id":741,"date":"2008-11-28T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2008-11-28T11:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=741"},"modified":"2008-11-28T06:30:05","modified_gmt":"2008-11-28T11:30:05","slug":"before-the-open-165","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Friday.<br \/>\nToday of course is a half-day which should be just long enough to allow the market to relieve some pressure. We don\u2019t expect much volume, but a little movement would not be out of the question. There isn\u2019t much news out.<br \/>\n30 minutes before the open, <b>Nas 100 futures<\/b> are down 16 to trade at 1178.50, and <b>SPX futures<\/b> are down 6.25 to trade at 880. .<br \/>\nThe <b>Asian\/Pacific<\/b> markets ended the week on high notes. Australia rallied better than 4%, Indonesia more than 3%, Hong Kong more than 2%, and Japan, Singapore and Seoul more than 1%. China fell 2.4%.<br \/>\n<b>Europe<\/b> is mostly down. Austria is down 2.6% while France, Germany, Amsterdam, Norway, Italy and Stockholm are down more than 1%. London is down 0.3%.<br \/>\nThe October <b>Euro-Zone unemployment rate<\/b> rose to a 20-month high of 7.7%.<br \/>\nThe November <b>Euro-Zone confidence<\/b> fell to a 15-year low.<br \/>\n<b>Royal Bank of Scotland<\/b> (RBS) says the British Government will buy a majority stake in the bank.<br \/>\n<b>Fujitsu Siemens<\/b> plans 700 German job cuts.<br \/>\nThe <b>Russian central bank<\/b> hiked rates 100 basis points to help support the ruble.<br \/>\n<b>STMicroelectronics<\/b> (STM) said sales will drop 13-18% in the next quarter down from its previous guidance for sales to be unchanged to down 8%.<br \/>\nStandard &#038; Poor\u2019s announced <b>Republic Services<\/b> (RSG) will replace <b>Allied Waste<\/b> (AW) in the S&#038;P500 and that <b>Dun &#038; Bradstreet<\/b> (DNB) will replace <b>Liz Claiborne<\/b> (LIZ).<br \/>\n<b>Carl Icahn<\/b> has bought close to 7 million additional shares of <b>YHOO<\/b> for just under 10 bucks per share.<br \/>\nMalls and hotels are thought to be the next victim from the mortgage crisis. Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market. Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, S.C., also are about to default on their mortgages.<br \/>\n<b>Gold<\/b> is up 0.78% and <b>silver<\/b> is down 1.07%.<br \/>\n<b>Crude oil<\/b> is down 76 cents to trade at 53.68.<br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<table align=\"right\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"20%\"><b>UPGRADES<\/b><\/td>\n<td width=\"80%\"> FRO, STD, THC <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"20%\"><b>DOWNGRADES<\/b><\/td>\n<td width=\"80%\"> OVTI, CPE, EBAY, CHU, BCE <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-><\/p>\n<table align=\"right\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td colspan=2 width=\"100%\"><b>EARNINGS<\/b><br \/>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"20%\">before the open<\/td>\n<td width=\"80%\"> CMRG, FRO<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"20%\">during trading<\/td>\n<td width=\"80%\"> none<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"20%\">after the close<\/td>\n<td width=\"80%\"> CENT<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<br \/>\n<b>ECONOMIC RELEASES<\/b><br \/>\nnone<br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Friday. Today of course is a half-day which should be just long enough to allow the market to relieve some pressure. We don\u2019t expect much volume, but a little movement would not be out of the question. There isn\u2019t much news out. 30 minutes before the open, Nas 100 futures are down [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}