{"id":5130,"date":"2011-12-12T08:44:41","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T13:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2011-12-12T08:44:41","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T13:44:41","slug":"before-the-open-dec-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5130","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Dec 12)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. <\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific market closed mixed and with a slight bullish bias. Australia, Japan and South Korea gained more than 1%. India dropped 2%, and China dropped 1%. Europe is currently down across the board. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Norway are all down at least 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down for the cash market.
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\nThe dollar is up big. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are getting hit hard.<\/span>
\nThere’s a headline that reads: “Markets fall as mood darkens over EU crisis pact: Stocks, euro and Italian bonds fall as mood darkens over EU plan to fix debt crisis.” Really??? The countries comprising the EU knowingly and willfully violated the last treaty (Germany was the first to do it). Now they’re writing a new treaty which essentially renews their committment to the same fiscal discipline, and we’re supposed to believe they’re going to follow it this time around. What a joke. Any treaty they come up with just pacifies the market and perhaps distracts investors from the fact that many southern European countries have massive debt issues, and agreeing to a new treaty now – with all its great intentions – isn’t going to help Italy make a debt payment next month.<\/span>
\nThat said, I think the indexes are in decent shape. They fell out of their early-November consolidation periods and then quickly recovered. Right now they’re unchanged over the last 8 weeks. Barring bad news, odds favor a move up into the end of the year, but with this morning’s headlines, apparantely agreeing on a treaty last week wasn’t sufficient. News risk remains. <\/span>
\nHere are the daily charts. For me to believe the market is healthy and gaining strength, I’d rather not see last week’s low taken out. More after the open.<\/span>
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\nheadlines at Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/span>
\nheadlines at MarketWatch<\/a><\/span>
\ntoday’s upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><\/span>
\nthis week’s Earnings<\/a><\/span>
\nthis week’s Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span>
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