{"id":10405,"date":"2017-04-24T07:48:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T12:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=10405"},"modified":"2017-04-24T07:48:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T12:48:02","slug":"before-the-open-apr-24-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=10405","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Apr 24)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> markets closed mostly up. Japan, India and Indonesia rallied more than 1%; China was weak. Europe<\/strong> is posting massive, across-the-board gains. France is up more than 4%; Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium more than 3%; Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Sweden more than 2%; most other markets are up 1% or more. Futures in the States<\/strong> are up huge. <\/span>
\n—————
\n VIDEO: <\/strong>The Trend is Your Friend<\/a>
\n—————<\/span>
\n The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are getting hit hard. Bonds are down a bunch. <\/span>
\n It’s all about France coming out of the weekend. They had their presidential election, and although it’s not decided who will win (the top two candidates will do a run-off on May 7), it’s likely the pro-EU candidate will beat the anti-EU candidate. This has caused the Asian\/Pacific markets to mostly post solid gains and Europe to posted its biggest 1-day gains in a long time. I can’t remember the last time there were so many markets up 2, 3 and 4%. <\/span>
\n S&P 500 futures are up 30 – can’t remember the last time I saw that.<\/span>
\n The indexes have been stuck in a rut for a few months. I can’t even say rallies have gotten sold and dips have gotten bought because there have been virtually no directional moves within the ranges. <\/span>
\n Many groups are in the same boat – they’re unchanged going back a couple months.<\/span>
\n The indicators are mixed – some would be supportive of a rally attempt, others would not. <\/span>
\n Can the news out of France begin a directional move? We’ll see. In the weekly report published over the weekend, I laid out what needs to take place for a rally attempt to sustain itself. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Travelers (TRV +0.19%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Argus with a price target of $132.<\/span>
\n Knight Transportation (KNX +1.64%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at UBS with a price target of $43.<\/span>
\n Stanley Black & Decker (SWK +3.65%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JP Morgan Chase with a price target of $152.<\/span>
\n U.S. Steel (X -0.29%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Macquarie.<\/span>
\n Walt Disney (DIS -0.30%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Loop Capital Markets.<\/span>
\n Groupon (GRPN -0.51%) lost nearly 1% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley who cited “lackluster” advertiser demand in North America.<\/span>
\n Park National (PRK +0.27%) reported Q1 EPS of $1.31, below consensus of $1.33.<\/span>
\n Community Trust Bancorp (CTBI +1.04%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underperform’ at Hilliard Lyons<\/span>
\n XOMA Corp (XOMA +3.48%) sank 11% in after-hours trading after Novo-Nordisk said it was terminating its exclusive licensing agreement with XOMA due to strategic and business reasons.<\/span>
\n Nexvet Biopharma (NVET unch) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse.<\/span>
\n EyeGate Pharmaceuticals (EYEG -1.42%) dropped 6% in after-hours trading after it filed an S-1 to sell up to $11.5 million of shares.<\/span>
\n Thursday’s Key Earnings<\/strong>
\n Blackstone (NYSE:BX) +0.5% after topping expectations.
\n Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) -6.8% AH whacked by inventory issues.
\n Philip Morris (NYSE:PM) -3.5% on an earnings miss.
\n Verizon (NYSE:VZ) -1.1% losing core subscribers.
\n Visa (NYSE:V) +2.1% AH boosted by Europe unit, buybacks.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Today’s Economic Calendar<\/strong>
\n 8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
\n 10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
\n 11:30 Fed’s Kashkari speech<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\nOther<\/strong>…<\/span>
\ntoday’s upgrades\/downgrades<\/a> from briefing.com<\/span>
\nthis week’s Earnings<\/a><\/span> from Morningstar
\nthis week’s Economic Numbers\/Reports<\/a><\/span> powered by ECONODAY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Japan, India and Indonesia rallied more than 1%; China was weak. Europe is posting massive, across-the-board gains. France is up more than 4%; Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium more than 3%; Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria and Sweden […]<\/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":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}