{"id":6280,"date":"2013-01-02T08:27:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T13:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=6280"},"modified":"2013-01-02T08:27:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T13:27:21","slug":"before-the-open-jan-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=6280","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Happy New Year.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The Asian\/Pacific markets mostly posted solid gains. Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan each rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently up across-the-board. Austria, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, the Czech Republic and Greece are up more than 2%. Futures here in the States point towards a big gap up for the cash market.<!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up. It&#8217;s party time.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">As dysfunctional and divided as Washington is, they were very predictable with regards to how they handled the fiscal cliff. Instead of agreeing in 2012 and having a black mark on their voting record, they waited until after midnight on New Years &#8211; after the automatic tax increases had already taken place &#8211; to vote. So now their voting records indicate they voted for a tax decrease, not a tax increase. The world is celebrating clarity. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The market hates uncertainty. The market can handle most bad situations as long as it knows what the situations are. With a deal, the guessing game can end. The definition of &#8220;rich&#8221; is changing, and those that meet the requirements won&#8217;t be happy with their new tax bill, but Wall St. still celebrates the known fact because it&#8217;s better than an unknown guess. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The combination of Monday&#8217;s huge up day and today&#8217;s gap up will put the S&amp;P just a couple points shy of its mid December high. Whether the gains hold is another story. Whether this is just a knee-jerk reaction that will get sold into is something we&#8217;ll have to look out for. Charts of individual stocks look decent, but several breadth indicators have taken a turn down and warn of weakness beneath the surface. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">There isn&#8217;t much company-specific news out. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Avis Budget Group (CAR) is buying Zipcar (ZIP).<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">PMI&#8217;s from around the world came in at very good levels.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Otherwise it&#8217;s all about the fiscal cliff deal. We know what the news is; now we get to see the reaction to the news. 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\/index.php\/2012\/12\/29\/earnings-dec-31-jan-4\/\">Earnings<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/index.php\/2012\/12\/29\/economic-numbers-dec-31-jan-4\/\">Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Wednesday. Happy New Year. The Asian\/Pacific markets mostly posted solid gains. Australia, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan each rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently up across-the-board. Austria, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, the Czech Republic and Greece are up more than 2%. Futures here in the States point [&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\/6280"}],"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=6280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}