{"id":7038,"date":"2013-09-23T07:29:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T12:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=7038"},"modified":"2013-09-23T07:29:34","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T12:29:34","slug":"before-the-open-sep-23-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=7038","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Sep 23)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed with a bearish slant. China and Taiwan did well. India, New Zealand and Singapore posted the biggest losses. Europe is currently down across-the-board, but losses are not great. Futures here in the States point towards a slight down open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is flat. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\n I don’t have anything to add to the comments I made over the weekend in the Weekly Report. The overall trend is up, but in the near term things are less clear. Was Friday’s big sell-off just a delayed knee-jerk reaction to the Fed or was it an accurate reflection of what Wall St. thinks of the Fed’s last statement and the uncertainty they introduced going forward? We’ll find out soon.<\/span>
\n Also an issue is the Dow reshuffling and the tendency for the index to drop when it happens. Two expensive stocks (V and GS) have been added to the Dow, which are now the most expensive and third most expensive stocks. Both are at their highs. Since the Dow is price-weighted, if these two give back a little of their recent run ups, the entire index is likely to drop.<\/span>
\n Earnings season doesn’t start for two weeks, and although the debt ceiling talks loom, it would be shocking if anything happened until just prior to the deadline.<\/span>
\n Overall the market is in good shape, but there are a few things looming that are potentially major.<\/span>
\n Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Walgreens (WAG -0.84%) was upgraded to “Overweight” from “Equal Weight” at Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n FedEx (FDX unch) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Stifel.<\/span>
\n Southwest (LUV -0.89%) was upgraded to “Neutral” from “Underperform” at BofA\/Merrill.<\/span>
\n Towers Watson (TW +2.90%) was downgraded to “Neutral” from “Overweight” at JPMorgan.<\/span>
\n Citigroup kept its “Buy” rating on Nike (NKE -0.19%) and raised its price target on the stock to $81 from $72.<\/span>
\n Sherwin-Williams (SHW -0.81%) was upgraded to “Outperform” from “Neutral” at Credit Suisse.<\/span>
\n BlackBerry (BBRY -17.02%) was downgraded to “Hold” from “Buy” at Jefferies.<\/span>
\n Lockheed Martin (LMT -1.83%) was awarded a $3.92 billion contract modification to a previously awarded contract for production of both U.S. government and exportable Foreign Military Sales Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Interceptors plus associated equipment to the United Arab Emirates.<\/span>
\n Billionare investor George Soros reported a 9.57% passive stake in Penn Virginia (PVA +3.47%) .<\/span>
\n Moody’s Investors Service upgraded its outlook on the Ba1 government bond rating of the Government of Ireland to stable from negative.<\/span>
\n Sandra Dauch reports 9.94% passive stake in American Axle (AXL -0.74%) .<\/span>
\n Bloomberg reported that J. C. Penney (JCP -1.37%) is in talks to raise additional funds.<\/span>
\n Earnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n 8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
\n 8:30 PMI Manufacturing Index Flash<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: none<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: RHT<\/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