{"id":5734,"date":"2012-06-18T07:27:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T12:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5734"},"modified":"2012-06-18T07:27:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T12:27:45","slug":"before-the-open-jun-18-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5734","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jun 18)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The Asian\/Pacific markets closed up across the board. Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is up 4%; no other index has moved 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap down open for the cash market.<!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The dollar is up. Oil is down &gt; 1%; copper is down. Gold and silver are both down. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">So the Greek elections are over. Without getting into details and naming names, the parties that wished to stay in the euro and work with the EU on a bailout won, so for now there&#8217;ll be no ripping up the old bailout, leaving the euro and re-establishing a new currency. Markets around the world can now breathe a collective sigh of relief. It doesn&#8217;t mean things are better out there, and it certainly doesn&#8217;t change any thing in spain, Italy and other struggle countries, but it does mean some uncertainty has been lifted.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The euro initially gapped up and rallied on the news but has stair-stepped down since and is now down.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Looking at the futures, I&#8217;d say the news from Greece was mostly expected and therefore a non-event. This is the ideal situation. Now the market can trade from a technical standpoint (supply, demand etc) and not be held hostage to an unknown event. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The market has just finished its best back to back up weeks in several months. The Dow and S&amp;P are at 1-month highs. The Nas and Russell are lagging but are at the tops of their ranges. Here are the dailies&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/pm\/indexD061712.png\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">My bias is to the upside. We could get a release of pressure today since everyone was nervous on Friday. We could also get some post-options expiration movement as traders jockey for position with the next expiration cycle. And of course there&#8217;s a FOMC meeting on Wednesday. But overall, a major item has been taken off the table and the charts have improved greatly the last couple weeks, so for now I favor the upside. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Spanish 10-year bond yields have held steady above 7% all day. Italy&#8217;s is above 6%.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Fitch lowered India&#8217;s outlook to &#8220;negative.&#8221;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Bershire Hathaway is paying $3.85 billion for a mortgage business and loan portfolio from bankrupt Residential Capital LLC. Buffett has been wrong about a housing recovery in the past. We&#8217;ll see if he has timed this purchase a little better.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Microsoft has sent out invitations to the press and industry analysts for a &#8220;major&#8221; announcement, but they didn&#8217;t say what it was. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">More after the open.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">headlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/apf\/archive.html\">Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">headlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/newsviewer\">MarketWatch<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/upgrades-downgrades\/\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5726\">Earnings<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5728\">Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed up across the board. Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Greece is up 4%; no other index has moved 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}