{"id":6948,"date":"2013-08-26T07:37:37","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=6948"},"modified":"2013-08-26T07:37:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:37:37","slug":"before-the-open-aug-26-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=6948","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Aug 26)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend.<\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied almost 2%; South Korea also did well. Indonesia fell 1.2%. Europe is currently mostly down. Italy is down 2.5% Austria, France, Amsterdam and Spain are also down noticably. There are no big winners. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is up. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\n The market snapped its 2-week losing streak last week but is still down a bunch for the month. Volume was light, and the intraday ranges were smaller than normal. <\/span>
\n The picture right now is pretty much middle of the road. The indexes<\/strong> are in no-man’s land between a thin area overhead that was created two weeks ago by a big gap down and sell-off and thin space below due to the market’s vertical July rally. The indicators<\/strong> are mixed. Some have hit extremes and have reversed; others are still moving in the bears’ direction. Charts of individual stocks<\/strong> are messy. Gold and silver look great; otherwise very few charts are setting up in tradable patterns. <\/span>
\n Between the indexes being neutral, the indicators not all being on the same page and not having many good set ups to play in the first place, now is not a time to be aggressive. It’s also the last week of August, and not all traders are finished with their summer vacations. <\/span>
\n Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Raytheon (RTN +1.30%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Stifel due to valuation.<\/span>
\n Amgen (AMGN -0.65%) was upgraded to “Overweight” from “Neutral” at Piper Jaffray.<\/span>
\n Dollar General (DG -0.72%) and Wal-Mart (WMT -0.03%) should be bought at current levels, according to Citigroup.<\/span>
\n Aeropostale (ARO -20.22%) was upgraded to “Hold” from “Sell” at Brean Capital due to valuation.<\/span>
\n Health Net (HNT +0.34%) was upgraded to “Positive” from “Neutral” at Susquehanna who also raised their price target on the stock to $40 from $35.<\/span>
\n Hasbro (HAS +1.88%) was upgraded to “Buy” from “Sell” at Citigroup who also raised their price target on the stock to $53 from $40.<\/span>
\n Family Dollar (FDO -0.40%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Deutsche Bank.<\/span>
\n Big Lots (BIG -0.74%) was upgraded to “Neutral” from “Underweight” at JPMorgan.<\/span>
\n Tyson Foods (TSN +0.25%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Buy” at BofA\/Merrill.<\/span>
\n Boeing (BA +0.32%) was awarded a multi-year government contract worth $904.42 million for 36 new Block III Apache Helicopters for the Republic of Korea.<\/span>
\n Earnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:<\/span>
\n 8:30 Durable Goods
\n 10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Outlook<\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: QIHU<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: none<\/span>
\n Other<\/strong>…<\/span>
\ntoday’s upgrades\/downgrades<\/a> from briefing.com<\/span>
\nthis week’s Earnings<\/a><\/span>
\nthis week’s Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span>
\n