{"id":5562,"date":"2012-04-25T07:35:49","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T12:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5562"},"modified":"2012-04-25T07:35:49","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T12:35:49","slug":"before-the-open-apr-25-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5562","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Apr 25)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Happy Fed Day.<\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed. China, Japan and Taiwan did well; there were no big losers. Europe is currently mostly up. Belgium is up 2%; Austria, France, Germany, Stockholm and Prague are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\nThe dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up.<\/span>
\nThe big news is AAPL. They easily topped earnings expectations, and the stock is being rewarded with a 10% gap up – a massive move for such a big company. The stock had dropped 10 of 11 days, but today’s open will recapture the losses from the last week.<\/span>
\nApple is 15% of the Nas 100, and tech is 23% of the S&P 500, so AAPL single handedly will boost the market today. Then the Fed will do their thing. Rates won’t change, but because economic numbers have softened since their last meeting, the statement may change. Some governors probably want to play it safe and do QE preemtively to stave off a recession. Others will want to the economy to weaken much more before the Fed acts. Perhaps the last line of their statement, which tells us the number of dissenting votes, will be just as important as the statement itself.<\/span>
\nHere’s the 30-min SPX chart. The indexes will gap up to about 1382 – in the middle of its range and a couple points above “support turned resistance.”<\/span>
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\nTrading has not been easy lately because we haven’t gotten much follow through. Be defensive. More after the open.<\/span>
\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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