{"id":6711,"date":"2013-05-28T07:28:32","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T12:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=6711"},"modified":"2013-05-28T07:28:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T12:28:32","slug":"before-the-open-may-28-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=6711","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (May 28)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Tuesday. Hope you enjoyed your weekend and extra day off. <\/span>
\nThe Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Japan rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently up across-the-board. France, Germany, Amsterdam and London are up more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a relatively big gap up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\nThe dollar is up slightly. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\nAfter a 4-week winning streak, the market dropped last week. The losses weren’t extreme…I’d consider the limited selling pressure to be perfectly normal for a strong market. The indicators are now split. Some are positioned to support a leg up; others need to cycle a little more before supporting a rally. We’ll see. By several measures the rally we’re in is like that have come before, and during parts of the rally, the market has completely ignored all technical developments and just kept plowing forward. Until its character changes, it would be foolish to expect a change. The market is what it is until it changes…just a trend is what it is until it reverses. <\/span>
\nHaving said this there are less good set ups right now, and many of the good ones are low-volume or cheap stocks. This is an interesting development. It’s as if there’s so much money flowing that needs a home, it has trickled down to the bottom-of-the-barrel stocks – many of which shouldn’t even be publicly traded companies. I wonder if this is a sign of too much fluff out there. <\/span>
\nHere are stock specific news from barchart.com…<\/span>
\nW.R. Grace (GRA -0.74%) was initiated with a “Conviction Buy” at Goldman with a price target of $105.<\/span>
\nBMO Capital upgraded Kansas City Southern (KSU -0.56%) to “Market Perform” from “Underperform” due to an expected recovery in agriculture and coal volumes and raised their price target to $107 from $93.<\/span>
\nAnadarko (APC -0.33%) was added to short-term buy list at Deutsche Bank.<\/span>
\nJabil Circuit (JBL +0.21%) was initiated with a “Buy” at Standpoint Research who has a price target of $28.<\/span>
\nTECO Energy (TE -0.81%) will acquire New Mexico Gas for $950 million.<\/span>
\nBroadcom (BRCM -0.46%) was downgraded at Susquehanna to “Neutral” from “Positive” due to valuation.<\/span>
\nTiffany & Co. (TIF +0.03%) reported Q1 EPS of 70 cents, much better than consensus of 53 cents.<\/span>
\nGoogle (GOOG -1.07%) rose more than 1% in pre-market trading after the WSJ reported the company plans to introduce a new online video channel.<\/span>
\nMerck (MRK -0.36%) was upgraded to “Buy” from “Hold” at Jefferies who raised their price target for the stock to $54 from $48.<\/span>
\nNews Corporation (NWSA +0.67%) disclosed in a regulatory filing that certain of its goodwill and intangible assets were potentially impaired and that it expects to record a pre-tax non-cash impairment charge in the range of $1.2 billion-$1.4 billion in Q4 related to its publishing segment.<\/span>
\nBerkshire Hathaway boosted its stake in DaVita (DVA -0.35%) to 14.2% from 13% and raised its passive stake in DirecTV (DTV -0.28%) to 6.7% from 5.8%.<\/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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