{"id":7226,"date":"2013-12-09T08:21:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T13:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=7226"},"modified":"2013-12-09T08:21:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T13:21:21","slug":"before-the-open-dec-9-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=7226","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Dec 9)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. Australia dropped, but India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan posted solid gains. Europe currently leans to the upside. None of the major markets have moved much from their unchanged levels. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is down. Oil is flat, copper up. Gold is up, silver flat.<\/span>
\n So here’s the battle…<\/span>
\n The long term trend is solidly up. Pretty much everything I look at points towards a continuation of the uptrend into 2014. But in the near term, two things bother me. 1) There’s a lack of very good set ups to play right now. Typical when the market is strong and the direction obvious, it’s hard to narrow my list of good set ups. Now, it’s hard to find a handful of good ones. 2) Several breadth indicators are not supporting more upside right now. There seems to be less participation. <\/span>
\n Was the first four days of last week indicative of what’s to come or was Friday step one in beginning the market’s next leg up? This is the big question. <\/span>
\n There’s a lack of scheduled news events (earnings, econ reports) this week, so the market is going to move based on good old fashion support and demand. <\/span>
\n In my opinion, the market has some work to do short term. It’s gotta show us another card or two. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Marathon Petroleum (MPC +4.00%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Underweight’ at JPMorgan.<\/span>
\n Mohawk (MHK +1.08%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Credit Suisse who also raised the price target on the stock to $166 from $142.<\/span>
\n Dean Foods (DF +0.77%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n Kraft Foods (KFT) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley with a price target of $60.<\/span>
\n Manitowoc (MTW -0.05%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Longbow.<\/span>
\n Noble Energy (NBL +0.67%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank.<\/span>
\n Valero Energy (VLO +2.71%) and Phillips 66 (PSX +2.17%) were both upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Deutsche Bank.<\/span>
\n Monsanto reported a 9.87% passive stake in Evogene (EVGN -2.15%) .<\/span>
\n Gilead Sciences (GILD +1.09%) rose nearly 5% in pre-market trading after it announced that the U.S. FDA has approved its Sovaldi 400 mg tablets, a once-daily oral nucleotide analog polymerase inhibitor for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C infection as a component of a combination antiviral treatment regiment.<\/span>
\n FJ Capital reported a 8.22% passive stake in Atlantic Coast Financial (ACFC +0.52%) .<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n No events scheduled.<\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: CASY, MTN, PBY, PVH<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: none<\/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