{"id":7345,"date":"2014-01-27T08:33:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T13:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=7345"},"modified":"2014-01-27T08:33:02","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T13:33:02","slug":"before-the-open-jan-27-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=7345","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jan 27)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets suffered big across-the-board losses. Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Japan lost more than 2%; China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan dropped more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly down. Spain is down 3.3%, Belgium and London are down more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is up. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\n We’re coming off the single biggest down day and biggest down week in a long time. Big down days have happened the last few months, but now we’ve gotten three in two weeks and also back-to-back selling sprees. <\/span>
\n The charts of individual stocks are as bad as I’ve seen in while. Almost nothing looks like a good buy (unless you like catching falling knives).<\/span>
\n The breadth indicators, which have hinted at a move down (or at least didn’t support a move up) are falling and are nowhere near oversold levels. <\/span>
\n I’ve been posting the following SPX chart for about three weeks, saying the divergence needed to be worked off before the market attempted to move up again. For a while, the market corrected with time. Now it’s correcting with a price drop. <\/span>
\n\"\"
\n On two occasions (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), I’ve talked about how the declining retail stocks may be a “canary in a coal mind.” The groups continues to struggle.<\/span>
\n\"\"
\n If you were bullish and long heading into the end of last week, you lost a few bucks on Friday. Oh well. That’s the price you pay for riding an uptrend for so long. When the market turns, you give a little back.<\/span>
\n If you were bearish, you got a nice move. Hopefully you just turned bearish and weren’t one of those “world is coming to an end” bears who have missed one of the greatest rallies in history. <\/span>
\n After an oversold bounce, I’m guessing we have more downside coming. More after the open. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Caterpillar (CAT -2.61%) reported Q4 EPS of $1.54, well ahead of consensus of $1.28, and also approved a new $10 billion stock repurchase program.<\/span>
\n CSX (CSX -3.03%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Atlantic Equities.<\/span>
\n Honeywell (HON -1.48%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Lagenberg.<\/span>
\n DigiTimes reports that Samsung (SSNLF -1.92%) has cut its target of notebook shipments in 2014 to 7 million from 12 million units shipped in 2013.<\/span>
\n lululemon (LULU +1.00%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at Janney Capital.<\/span>
\n Cisco (CSCO -1.60%) was downgraded to ‘Underweight’ from ‘Neutral’ at JPMorgan.<\/span>
\n Merck (MRK +0.74%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n American Electric Power (AEP -1.81%) reported Q4 EPS of 60 cents, higher than consensus of 57 cents.<\/span>
\n Roper Industries (ROP -2.40%) reported Q4 EPS of $1.65, better than consensus of $1.61.<\/span>
\n Northrop Grumman (NOC -3.45%) was awarded a $200 million government contract to perform acquisition and sustainment for the Embedded Global Positioning System Inertial Navigation System.<\/span>
\n Corvex Management reported a 7.8% stake in Signet Jewelers (SIG -1.75%) .<\/span>
\n Pershing Square reported a 30.9% passive stake in Platform Specialty Products (PAH -3.36%) .<\/span>
\n The WSJ reported that Wal-Mart (WMT -0.72%) will eliminate 2,300 Sam’s Club employees.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n 10:00 New Home Sales
\n 10:30 Dallas Fed Manufacturing Outlook<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: AEP, AUO, CAT, NVR, RCL, RGS, ROP, RYN<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: AAPL, ASH, CMRE, CR, GGG, OLN, PCL, RCII, RMBS, SANM, SIMO,STLD, STM, STX, SWFT, X, ZION<\/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