{"id":7816,"date":"2014-07-14T07:45:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T12:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=7816"},"modified":"2014-07-14T07:45:22","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T12:45:22","slug":"before-the-open-jul-14-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=7816","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Jul 14)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a nice weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China rallied 1%, Japan 0.9%, and Hong Kong and New Zealand also did well. Europe currently leans to the upside. Stockholm, Switzerland, Norway and Greece are up 1% or more; London, Germany and France are also up nicely. Futures here in the States point towards a relatively big gap up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is down. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down ~ 2% each. <\/span>
\n The market pulled back last week. Most of the indexes fell relatively small amounts, but the small caps dropped a bunch – they gave back three weeks of gains in just a couple days. <\/span>
\n There are also warnings in the form of some indicators not supporting an upside move. The AD line, AD volume line and a few other breath indicators talked about in the weekly report need to improve if today’s gap up open is going to hold and act as the beginning of a leg up.<\/span>
\n Also there aren’t many good set ups to be had right now. When trading is good, it’s difficult to narrow my list to a workable number, but right now, I can barely find a handful of good set ups to trade. That’s just the way it is. I post the best I can find, and if there aren’t many out there, to me it’s a warning that the trading environment isn’t very good. Such is the case in my opinion. <\/span>
\n I like the market overall. Unless something major happens in the world, I believe dips will be bought and new highs will be made. But in the near term, things are iffy. More after the open. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Stifel raised its price target on SanDisk (SNDK +1.16%) to $114 from $95 and keeps a ‘Buy’ rating on the stock as it expects SanDisk’s June quarter results to beat consensus estimates.<\/span>
\n Colfax (CFX +0.07%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’ at Argus.<\/span>
\n Covidien (COV +0.41%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Piper Jaffray.<\/span>
\n DreamWorks Animation (DWA -0.53%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at B. Riley.<\/span>
\n Alcentra Capital (ABDC -2.07%) was upgraded to ‘Strong Buy’ from ‘Outperform’ at Raymond James.<\/span>
\n eBay (EBAY +2.32%) was downgraded to ‘Sector Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Pacific Crest.<\/span>
\n Wells Fargo (WFC -0.62%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at JPMorgan.<\/span>
\n FMC Corporation (FMC +0.17%) was downgraded to ‘Hold’ from ‘Buy’ at Jefferies.<\/span>
\n Apple (AAPL +0.19%) rose 1.3% in pre-market trading after Barclays raised its recommendation on the company to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight.’<\/span>
\n Alcoa (AA +2.24%) late Friday filed a $5 billion mixed securities shelf registration.<\/span>
\n Noble Corp’s (NE -0.75%) board approved a spin-off of Paragon Offshore.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n No events scheduled.<\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: C<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: LEDS, OZRK, PPHM<\/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