{"id":5205,"date":"2012-01-05T08:39:50","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T13:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5205"},"modified":"2012-01-05T08:39:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T13:39:50","slug":"before-the-open-jan-5-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5205","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Thursday.<\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down. China and Australia each dropped about 1%. Europe is currently almost entirely down. Austria is down 1.8%; Belgium is down 1%; France is down 0.9%. Futures here in the States point towards a negative open for the cash market.<\/span>
\nSo far the S&P is up 19.7 this year, but Tuesday’s gap up was about 20 points. All the gains came in the form of a gap; since then it’s been mostly slow, range-bound movement. If you were hoping 2012 would bring a different character to the market, you’re still hoping. This is how the second half of 2011 was…lots of gaps, lots of boring, range-bound movement, lots of sudden moves that were hard to play.<\/span>
\nThere are reasons to be bullish and reasons to be bearish. The index charts look decent – not fantastic – just decent. The group charts look good too. Many are trying to breakout, and they need to follow through. Individual stocks lean to the upside too. There are some laggards (ORCL, AMZN), but there are many more stocks doing great. The sum of this nudges me to the upside, but I’m still concerned the small caps are lagging. Below are the 60-min S&P and Russell charts. The S&P is back in its early-2011 range (although it still has some overhead resistance from late October to contend with), but the Russell has yet to recover to same degree. For me to believe a rally can have legs, the small caps must do better. Investors must be willing to take on some risk. Without the small caps, the upside for the large caps is limited. 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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