{"id":11125,"date":"2018-01-04T09:01:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T14:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=11125"},"modified":"2018-01-04T09:01:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T14:01:58","slug":"before-the-open-jan-4-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=11125","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Good morning. Happy Thursday.<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> The <strong>Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> closed mostly up. Japan rallied more than 3%; China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand also did well. South Korea was weak. <strong>Europe, Africa and the Middle East<\/strong> are currently doing very well. Italy, Austria and Poland are up more than 2%; Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Russia are up more than 1%. South Africa is weak. Futures in the <strong>States<\/strong> point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><!--more-->The dollar is down. Bitcoin is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down. 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;\"> Mastercard (MA +1.26%) was upgraded to &#8216;Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Mizuho Securities USA with a price target of $175.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> CVS Health Corp (CVS -0.44%) was<br \/>\nupgraded to &#8216;Strong Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Outperform&#8217; at Raymond James with a 12-month target price of $90.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Advanced Micro Devices (AMD +5.19%) gained almost 3% in after-hours trading after it said it sees &#8220;near zero risk&#8221; to its chips related to Intel&#8217;s problem.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Intel (INTC -3.39%) fell nearly 2% in after-hours trading after it said an exploit in its chips allows access to privileged information and a fix will take time to deploy.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Visteon (VC +1.69%) was rated a new &#8216;Buy&#8217; at Guggenheim Securities with a 12-month target price of $140.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Marathon Oil (MRO +1.67%) was upgraded to &#8216;Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Neutral&#8217; at Bank of America\/Merrill Lynch with a price target of $21.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Zumiez (ZUMZ +2.50%) rallied 13% in after-hours trading after it reported Dec comparable sales rose +7.9%, better than expectations of +4.1%, and then boosted its Q4 EPS forecast to 88 cents-90 cents, higher than consensus of 80 cents.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Tesla (TSLA -1.02%) lost nearly 2% in after-hours trading after it pushed back its goal to assemble 5,000 Model 3s cars by June, three months longer than previous expectations of 5,000 cars assembled by March.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Qiagen (QGEN +1.82%) was rated a new &#8216;Outperform&#8217; at Evercore ISI with a 12-month target price of $35.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE -0.47%) fell 3% in after-hours trading after it announced that it had commenced an underwritten public offering of 6.0 million shares of common stock.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA -1.39%) climbed 6% in after-hours trading after it said it will begin a trial in the first half of 2018 with Mylan for its M710 injection in patients with diabetic macular edema.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Seaspan (SSW -0.70%) rose almost 2% in after-hours trading after Fairfax Financial Holdings said it will invest $250 million is Seaspan in exchange for unsecured debentures and Class A common share purchase warrants.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Gener8 Maritime (GNRT +1.21%) fell 4% in after-hours trading after it was downgraded to &#8216;Neutral&#8217; from &#8216;Buy&#8217; at UBS.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Fang Holdings Ltd (SFUN -3.00%) slid nearly 4% in after-hours trading after a block of 15.5 million shares of Fang were offered at $4.90-$5.10 via Morgan Stanley.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Rite Aid (RAD -0.94%) dropped nearly 10% in after-hours trading after it reported Q3 revenue of $5.35 billion, below consensus of $7.64 billion.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Today&#8217;s Economic Calendar<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Chain Store Sales<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 7:30 Challenger Job-Cut Report<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 8:15 ADP Jobs Report<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 8:30 Initial Jobless Claims<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 9:45 PMI Services Index<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 1:30 PM Fed&#8217;s Bullard: U.S. Monetary and Economic Policy<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 4:30 PM Money Supply<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Thursday. The Asian\/Pacific closed mostly up. Japan rallied more than 3%; China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand also did well. South Korea was weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently doing very well. Italy, Austria and Poland are up more than 2%; Spain, Belgium, Portugal, the Czech [&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\/11125"}],"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=11125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}