{"id":6231,"date":"2012-12-13T08:44:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T13:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=6231"},"modified":"2012-12-13T08:44:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T13:44:18","slug":"before-the-open-dec-13-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=6231","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Dec 13)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Thursday.<\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed. China dropped; Japan, south Korea and Taiwan rallied. Europe is currently down across the board. Greece, Stockholm and Germany are posting the biggest losses. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\nThe dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down.<\/span>
\nHere’s an update of the daily index charts. The Russell, which had already gapped out of a small consolidation pattern, formed an ugly bearish engulfing candle. The Dow and S&P both penetrated resistance yesterday but closed at their lows and below their respective resistances. The Nas got rejected by resistance. <\/span>
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\nWe entered yesterday with a lot of cross-currents. The small caps wanted to rally, but the large caps and Nas would need to follow along. The FOMC was an unknown but was going to come and go while the fiscal cliff talks were going to linger. With resistance just overhead for many of the indexes, it seemed to be do or die time, it seemed like the market needed to bust out and run or rest – one or the other. The problem was the market had already rallied five straight days, so it needed to restore its spent energy, and although the time of year would suggest good feelings and upward price action, could we really expect a full-blow rally prior to the fiscal cliff being dealt with. Needless to say, there were lots of cross-currents and we ended up getting false breakouts yesterday. <\/span>
\nI’m maintaining my stance. I’m cautiously bullish, but we have to play good defense. <\/span>
\nCVS (CVS) has hiked its dividend 38% and is doing a $4B buyback. <\/span>
\nBarclays is cutting 2000 jobs.<\/span>
\nCiena’s (CIEN) Q4 loss widened.<\/span>
\nBest Buy (BBY) is up 14%…more rumors of the stock being taken private.<\/span>
\nCompanies either pulling forward dividends to this calendar year or paying special one-time dividends include: CAT, INDB, TRLG, ECOL, BGG, LM, MTSC, STSA, BBGI, IPGP, HTLF, CCUR.<\/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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