{"id":11119,"date":"2018-01-03T08:56:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T13:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=11119"},"modified":"2018-01-03T08:56:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T13:56:55","slug":"before-the-open-jan-3-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=11119","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Good morning. Happy Wednesday.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> The <strong>Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> markets closed mostly up. Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore rallied more than 1%; China, Hong Kong, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and Malaysia also did well. Indonesia was weak. <strong>Europe, Africa and the Middle East<\/strong> are currently mostly up. France, Germany, the UAE, Finland, Russia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, the Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia are up the most; Poland, Turkey, South Africa and Israel are down. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><!--more-->The dollar is up. Bitcoin is up. Oil is up; copper is down. Gold and silver are flat. Bonds are up. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Aetna (AET +0.17%) was upgraded to &#8216;Overweight&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Piper Jaffray with a 12-month target price of $207.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Wells Fargo (WFC +0.69%) was upgraded to &#8216;Outperform&#8217; from &#8216;Market Perform&#8217; at Bernstein with a price target of $69.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Dick&#8217;s Sporting Goods (DKS +2.61%) was upgraded to &#8216;Outperform&#8217; from &#8216;Market Perform&#8217; at Wells Fargo Securities with a price target of $35.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> American Express (AXP -0.37%) was rated a new &#8216;Buy&#8217; at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $118.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Expedia (EXPE +1.38%) was upgraded to &#8216;Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Bank of America\/Merrill Lynch with a 12-month target price of $145.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Harley-Davidson (HOG +2.32%) fell 3% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to &#8216;Underperform&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Longbow Research.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Itron (ITRI +1.61%) was rated a &#8216;Strong Buy&#8217; at Raymond James with a 2-month target price of $84.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Sempra Energy (SRE -1.47%) fell 2% in after-hours trading after it proposed $2.5 billion in public offerings of its common stock in connection with its acquisition of Energy Future Holdings.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Howard Hughes Corp (HHC +1.20%) slid over 3% in after-hours trading after Pershing Square Holdings announced a proposed sale of all 2,067,490 shares it holds of HHC common stock via JPMorgan Chase.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd (TEVA +0.84%) lost nearly 1% in after-hours trading after it was rated a new &#8216;Underperform&#8217; at Leering Partners LLC with a 12-month target price of $15.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Atara Biotherapeutics (ATRA unch) lost nearly 3% in after-hours trading after it announced that it had commenced an underwritten public offering of $100 million in shares of its common stock.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> MoneyGram International (MGI +0.99%) slumped 8% in after-hours trading after it dropped its merger plan with China&#8217;s Ant Financial Services when it was unable to win approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals (TTPH +2.70%) rose 5% in after-hours trading after it submitted its new drug application to the FDA for intravenous eravacycline for treatment of intra-abdominal infections.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Today&#8217;s Economic Calendar<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Auto Sales<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 8:55 Redbook Chain Store Sales<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:00 ISM Manufacturing Index<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:00 Construction Spending<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 2:00 PM FOMC minutes<\/span><\/span><\/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 Wednesday. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore rallied more than 1%; China, Hong Kong, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and Malaysia also did well. Indonesia was weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently mostly up. France, Germany, the UAE, Finland, Russia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, [&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\/11119"}],"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=11119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}