{"id":11165,"date":"2018-01-18T08:36:50","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=11165"},"modified":"2018-01-18T08:36:50","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:36:50","slug":"before-the-open-jan-18-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=11165","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 18)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Thursday.<\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> markets were split today. China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia did well; Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East<\/strong> are currently split. Turkey, Germany, Russia and Portugal are up; the UK and Greece are down. Futures in the States<\/strong> point towards a flat open for the cash market. <\/span>
\n—————
\n VIDEO: <\/strong>Cult Stocks Take a Hit<\/a>
\n—————<\/span>
\n Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Wal-Mart (WMT +2.00%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ and added to the ‘Conviction List’ at Goldman Sachs with a price target of $117.<\/span>
\n Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH +1.49%) ws upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup with a price target of $89.<\/span>
\n Fluor (FLR +0.17%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse with a price target of $71.<\/span>
\n Avexis (AVXS -0.13%) was rated a new ‘Outperform’ at Credit Suisse with a 12-month target price of $134.<\/span>
\n Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO +2.54%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Clarksons Platou Securities with a 12-month target price of $17.<\/span>
\n Alcoa (AA +1.33%) dropped almost 5% in after-hours trading after it reported Q4 adjusted EPS of $1.04, below consensus of $1.23.<\/span>
\n PTC Corp (PTC +2.16%) jumped 7% in after-hours trading after it reported Q1 adjusted revenue of $307 million, better than consensus of $301 million, and said it sees full-year revenue of $1.24 billion-$1.25 billion, the midpoint above consensus of $1.24 billion.<\/span>
\n Agios Pharmaceuticals (AGIO +2.22%) slid 2% in after-hours trading after it announced that it plans to sell $400 million of its common stock in an underwritten public offering.<\/span>
\n Eagle Point Credit (ECC -2.00%) fell nearly 4% in after-hours trading after it commenced an underwritten public offering of 1.75 million shares of its common stock.<\/span>
\n Paratek Pharmaceuticals (PRTK -0.45%) dropped almost 9% in after-hours trading after it commenced a registered underwritten public offering of $50 million of its shares of common stock.<\/span>
\n Electro Scientific Industries (ESIO +9.50%) surged over 20% in after-hours trading after it reported Q3 preliminary revenue of between $106 million and $111 million, well above consensus of $85 million.<\/span>
\n Playa Hotels & Resorts NV (PLYA +0.27%) fell 4% in after-hours trading after a block of 6 million shares of its common stock was said to be offered at $10.80 to $11.00 via Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n SLM Corp (SLM +0.17%) lost 2% in after-hours trading after it said it sees full-year core EP of 97 cents to $1.10, weaker than consensus of $1.04.<\/span>
\n Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (ARWR +2.14%) dropped 9% in after-hours trading after it announced a proposed underwritten offering of $40 million of the company’s common stock.<\/span>
\n Wednesday’s Key Earnings<\/strong>
\n Alcoa (NYSE:AA) -6.7% AH as earnings came up short.
\n Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) -0.2% hurt by a tax-related charge.
\n Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) -1.9% on weak trading revenues.
\n Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI) +0.4% AH beating expectations.
\n U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) -1.5% amid sour banking sentiment.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Today’s Economic Calendar<\/strong>
\n 8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
\n 8:30 Housing Starts
\n 8:30 Philly Fed Business Outlook
\n 9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
\n 10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
\n 11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories
\n 4:30 PM Money Supply
\n 4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
\n 6:05 PM Fed’s Mester: Monetary Policy<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/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 Thursday. The Asian\/Pacific markets were split today. China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia did well; Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were weak. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are currently split. Turkey, Germany, Russia and Portugal are up; the UK and Greece are down. Futures in the States point towards […]<\/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\/11165"}],"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=11165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}