{"id":7166,"date":"2013-11-20T08:23:49","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=7166"},"modified":"2013-11-20T08:23:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T13:23:49","slug":"before-the-open-nov-20-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=7166","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Nov 20)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.<\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly down. India, Indonesia, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan dropped the most. China moved up. Europe is currently down across-the-board. Spain and Greece are down more than 1%; Austria, Belgium, Stockholm and Italy are also down noticeably. Futures here in the States point towards a flat open for the cash market.
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\n The dollar is down slightly. Oil and copper are flat. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\n Bernanke gave a speech last night. He reiterated the Fed’s plan to continue QE until unemployment gets below 6.5% and also said rates will be kept low for an even longer period time. Fantastic. Earning 0% interest on money in the bank will continue. <\/span>
\n Here’s a re-post of the most ominous chart I see right now. It’s a divergence between the S&P 500 large caps and the Russell 2000 small caps. This tells me money is rotating from smaller speculative companies to larger, more established, dividend-paying companies. Short term this is bearish, so as long as it persists, the market isn’t likely to move up. <\/span>
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\n Overall I still like the market. Most of the indexes made new highs last week. Most important groups are doing well. The indicators are doing well. The Fed is not going to ease their policy, and many money managers are under-performing the market and will need to do something to salvage their meager gains between now and the end of the year. <\/span>
\n A few leading stocks have started to lag, and the small caps are lagging. Otherwise I see no reason to change my long term stance. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Consolidated Edison (ED -0.65%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Argus.<\/span>
\n Boeing (BA -1.00%) was downgraded to ‘Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Oppenheimer.<\/span>
\n Priceline.com (PCLN -0.84%) was upgraded to ‘Conviction Buy’ from ‘Buy’ at Goldman.<\/span>
\n Best Buy (BBY -10.97%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Citigroup.<\/span>
\n JM Smucker (SJM -0.29%) reported Q2 EPS of $1.52, below consensus of $1.59.<\/span>
\n Lowe’s (LOW -0.88%) reported Q3 EPS of 47 cents, weaker than consensus of 48 cents.<\/span>
\n JC Penney (JCP unch) reported a Q3 EPS loss of -$1.81, a wider loss than consensus of -$1.74.<\/span>
\n Deere & Co. (DE -1.02%) reported Q4 EPS of $2.11, well ahead of consensus of $1.90.<\/span>
\n Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ +0.59%) DePuy Orthopaedics announced a $2.5 bllion U.S. settlement to compensate 8,000 hip system patients who had surgery to replace their their ASR hip, known as revision surgery, as of August 31.<\/span>
\n Yahoo (YHOO -0.97%) climbed over 3% in after-hours trading after it said it will raise its share buyback program by $5 billion.<\/span>
\n HealthSouth (HLS -1.39%) lowered guidance on fiscal 2013 EPS view to $2.43-$2.46 from $3.06-$3.09, but it is still above consensus of $1.89.<\/span>
\n Herbalife (HLF -1.83%) rose over 3% in after-hours trading after William P. Stiritz reported a 6.38% stake in the company.<\/span>
\n La-Z-Boy (LZB +0.25%) jumped over 6% in after-hours trading after it reported Q2 EPS of 31 cents, higher than consensus of 26 cents.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n 7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
\n 8:30 Consumer Price Index
\n 8:30 Retail Sales
\n 10:00 Business Inventories
\n 10:00 Existing Home Sales
\n 10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
\n 12:10 PM Fed’s Bullard: U.S. Economic and Monetary Policy
\n 2:00 PM FOMC minutes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: ADT, DE, JCP, LOW, SJM, SPLS<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: BV, GMCR, JACK, LTD, POST, VVTV, WSM<\/span>
\nOther<\/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