{"id":4943,"date":"2011-10-14T07:40:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=4943"},"modified":"2011-10-14T07:40:07","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:40:07","slug":"before-the-open-oct-14-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=4943","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Oct 14)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Friday.<\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down, but there were no big movers in either direction. Hong Kong lost 1.4% and India gained 1.2%. Europe is currently mostly up. Belgium, France, Amsterdam, Norway, Stockholm, Switzerland and London are each up around 1% or a little more. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.<\/span>
\nThe big news overnight was Standard & Poor’s downgraded Spain’s long term debt rating. For most of the last two months, such news would have prompted the S&P futures to be down 25 right now but instead they’re up 11. Has all the negative anticipated financial issues in Europe been priced into the market? I’m not sure, but the market’s reaction is worth noting. Strong markets embrace good news and ignore\/absorb bad news. Today’s news is bad and the futures are moving up anyways. Respect the price action. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not. <\/span>
\nYesterday JPM got hit hard after earnings. Today GOOG is up big. An earnings season personality has not been established. So far poor reports have induced selling and good reports buying. We need more data to see if this is a trend or if these first handful of reactions were unique to the specific companies. <\/span>
\nThe indexes have gone almost vertical the last 8 days and are close to the tops of their ranges. Short term sentiment is up, but I don’t think the risk\/rewards for initiating new positions is great. In many cases stocks have gone straight up and aren’t forming tradeable patterns. By not being more aggressive, I run the risk of missing trades. Oh well. That’s the way it goes. I plan on trading for a long time, so missing a couple entries doesn’t matter to me. And besides, here’s the S&P. It’s still range bound. <\/span>
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\nheadlines at Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/span>
\ntoday’s upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><\/span>
\nthis week’s Earnings<\/a><\/span>
\nthis week’s Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span>
\n