{"id":11099,"date":"2017-12-26T08:44:48","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T13:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=11099"},"modified":"2017-12-26T08:44:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T13:44:48","slug":"before-the-open-dec-26-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=11099","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Dec 26)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hope you had a good, long weekend. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> The <strong>Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> markets were mixed today. China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the Philippines posted gains while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan posted losses. <strong>Europe, Africa and the Middle East<\/strong> lean to the downside. Greece and Saudi Arabia are up; Poland, the UAE, Russia, Spain, and Sweden are down. Futures in the <strong>States<\/strong> point towards a down open for the cash market. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><!--more-->The dollar is up. Bitcoin is up. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up. Bonds are down. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Ignyta (RXDX +72.67%) was downgraded to &#8216;Neutral&#8217; from &#8216;Buy&#8217; at Ladenburg Thalmann &amp; Co.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Riot Blockchain (RIOT -11.16%) rose over 10% in pre-market trading as Bitcoin rallied as much as 13%.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Unitil Corp (UTL +0.41%) was upgraded to &#8216;Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC with a price target of $50.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Capital One Financial (COF +0.98%) estimates that the Tax Act will result in about a $1.9 billion charge due to write down of deferred tax assets.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Mallinckrodt (MNK -1.06%) said it acquired Sucampo Pharmaceuticals for about $1.2 billion, or $18 a share. Sucampo closed at $17 a share last Friday.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> AbbVie (ABBV +0.31%) may move higher this morning after a judge late Friday through out a $150 million punitive damage award against AbbVie on allegations it misrepresented the heart-attack and other blood-clotting risks from its AndroGel testosterone booster and ordered a new trial.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> KLX Inc (KLXI -0.32%) may move higher this morning after it said it initiated a formal process to explore strategic alternatives including a sale of the company in response from interested parties and that it had retained Goldman Sachs as financial adviser.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Agile Therapeutics (AGRX -47.06%) was downgraded to &#8216;Market Perform&#8217; from &#8216;Outperform&#8217; at William Blair &amp; Co.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Bank of America (BAC +0.20%) estimates net income for the quarter ending December 2017 will include a reduction of approximately $3 billion because of the Tax Act.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Ocular Therapeutics (OCUL -0.65%) dropped 7% in after-hours trading after it said it received a subpoena from the SEC related to its Dextenza.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Thursday&#8217;s Key Earnings<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Nike (NYSE:NKE) -1.5% AH on weakness in North America.<\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Today&#8217;s Economic Calendar<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:00 Richmond Fed Mfg.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:00 State Street Investor Confidence Index<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 1:00 PM Results of $26B, 2-Year Note Auction<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Other<\/strong>&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/upgrades-downgrades\/\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a> from briefing.com<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morningstar.com\/earnings\/earnings-calendar.aspx\">Earnings<\/a><\/span> from Morningstar<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/mam.econoday.com\/\">Economic Numbers\/Reports<\/a><\/span> powered by ECONODAY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hope you had a good, long weekend. The Asian\/Pacific markets were mixed today. China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the Philippines posted gains while Japan, South Korea and Taiwan posted losses. Europe, Africa and the Middle East lean to the downside. Greece and Saudi Arabia are up; Poland, the UAE, Russia, Spain, [&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":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11099"}],"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=11099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}