{"id":5616,"date":"2012-05-14T07:38:51","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T12:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5616"},"modified":"2012-05-14T07:38:51","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T12:38:51","slug":"before-the-open-may-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5616","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (May 14)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.<\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down. Hong Kong and Indonesia dropped more than 1%. Europe is currently suffering stiff, across-the-board losses. Greece is down 5%, Austria 3.2%, Belgium, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Stockholm and London more than 2%, and Norway, Switzerland and the Czech Republic more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap down for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\nThe dollar is up slightly. Oil and copoer are each down about 2%. Gold and silver are down more than 1%. <\/span>
\nGreece remains the headline story. Will they accept another round of bailout money? Will they leave the Euro? Parliament is split, and that means uncertainty.<\/span>
\nItaly and Spain’s borrowing costs continue to rise.<\/span>
\nChina cut its reserve requirement by 50 basis points over the weekend. This enables banks to lend out a little more than before. It’ll help boost their economy but offers a warning their slowdown may be steeper than first thought…after all, why would they have to resort to such measures. <\/span>
\nIndian inflation unexpectedly increased to 7.23% – this could limit their ability to cut rates.<\/span>
\nSupposedly 3 execs at JP Morgan will be stepping down after costing the company $2 billion. Bloomberg says the entire London staff (where the loss took place) could be dismissed. Personally I think the CEO should be stepping down too.<\/span>
\nYahoo’s CEO is losing his job. Lieing about whether he earned computer science degree 30 years ago is the reason.<\/span>
\nOtherwise I don’t have anything to add to my comments I made over the weekend in my weekly report. As I stated, the bulls don’t have much wiggle room here. Heading into last week they had a little cushion before hitting support. Now they don’t. The S&P will open today near the key 1340 level, and many breadth indicators are pointing down but are not at washout levels. The bulls were able to push prices up intraday a couple times last week, but the overall path of least resistance never changed from being down. Don’t fight it. 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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