{"id":1753,"date":"2009-08-31T07:34:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T12:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2009-08-31T07:34:11","modified_gmt":"2009-08-31T12:34:11","slug":"before-the-open-aug-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=1753","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Aug 31)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.<br \/>\nThe last day of Aug will start off on a down note. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down with China dropping almost 7%. Europe is currently mostly down, but there are no losses greater than 2%. Futures here in the States indicator a decent gap down open. This comes off a week the market traded in a tight range without much conviction in either direction. Here\u2019s the 7-day, 10-min chart. &#8230;<!--more--><br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/before-the-open\/images\/spx083109.png\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nThe S&amp;P is up 41 for August\u2026not bad considering the gains already achieved heading into the month and the tendency for the month to be weak. Here\u2019s a chart which shows the average monthly gains of the Dow from 1950 \u2013 2007 (blue) and 1980 \u2013 2007 (gray). Things don\u2019t get any easier now. Sept is by far the weakest month of the year.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/before-the-open\/images\/cod083109.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nBut it would be irresponsible for me to not mention historical precedent has not held the last year. According to the graph above, Nov, Jan and Feb are all supposed to be strong months, but the market hasn\u2019t followed the pattern lately.<br \/>\nOverall my bias remains to the upside. All the indexes are moving up together, and most key groups are moving up also. The most obvious warning is coming from China, so we\u2019re going to see in the next couple weeks who leads, the US or China. See chart below. It\u2019s not updated with today\u2019s data; I indicated where it closed today.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/before-the-open\/images\/ssec083109.png\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nHaving an up bias doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m aggressively going long. I\u2019m still in conservative mode \u2013 especially with Sept being right around the corner. More after the open.<br \/>\nheadlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/apf\/archive.html\">Yahoo Finance<\/a><br \/>\nstocks to watch from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/stocks-in-focus-for-monday-aug-31-2009-08-28\">MarketWatch<\/a><br \/>\ntoday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/briefing.com\/Investor\/Public\/Calendars\/UpgradesDowngrades.htm\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><br \/>\nyesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1747\">Sector Performance<\/a><br \/>\nthis week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1749\">Earnings Reports<\/a><br \/>\nthis week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=1751\">Economic Numbers<\/a><br \/>\nopen a real-time futures demo account at&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.infinityfutures.com\/IATdemosignup.aspx?ref=aglb\"><img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/banners\/v3468x60.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nvar gaJsHost = ((\"https:\" == document.location.protocol) ? \"https:\/\/ssl.\" : \"http:\/\/www.\");\ndocument.write(unescape(\"%3Cscript src='\" + gaJsHost + \"google-analytics.com\/ga.js' type='text\/javascript'%3E%3C\/script%3E\"));\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nvar pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(\"UA-6273151-1\");\npageTracker._initData();\npageTracker._trackPageview();\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. The last day of Aug will start off on a down note. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down with China dropping almost 7%. Europe is currently mostly down, but there are no losses greater than 2%. Futures here in the States indicator a decent gap [&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\/1753"}],"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=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}