{"id":8006,"date":"2014-10-06T07:40:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T12:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=8006"},"modified":"2014-10-06T07:40:40","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T12:40:40","slug":"before-the-open-oct-6-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=8006","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Oct 6)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. <\/span>
\n Several Asian\/Pacific markets were closed today. The open markets leaned to the upside. Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong rallied more than 1%. Europe is currently mostly up. Russia is up 2.4%, followed by Spain (up 1.3%), Austria (up 1%) and Germany (up 0.9%). Futures here in the States point towards a moderate gap up open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar is down. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are up. <\/span>
\n The market experience intense selling at the beginning of last week and then V-bottomed Thursday and rallied hard Friday. The indexes still closed down for the week, but the closes were in the upper third of the weekly ranges. <\/span>
\n The indicators have all moved to extreme levels and are positioned to support a market rally, if that’s what the market wants to do. Until the middle of last week, there were some holdouts, but now we get the “all clear” sign. <\/span>
\n This has happened many times just in the last year. The market drops…the bears get super excited that a top is finally in…then the market bounces and Wall St. looks to short what they assume and expect is a dead-cat bounce…and the market keeps going and going and going and before they know it, a new high is put in place. I’m not predicting this, but it’s worth considering and planning for because it has happened so many times. Here’s a chart of the S&P 500 I’ve posted many times. If all you knew was this chart, nothing that has happened the last couple weeks would be considered out of the ordinary. <\/span>
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\n Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Hewlett-Packard (HPQ +2.00%) jumped over 7% in pre-market trading after the company announced that it will split into two separate companies, a personal-computer and printer business, and corporate hardware and services operations.<\/span>
\n Burger King (BKW +1.48%) was upgraded to ‘Overweight’ from ‘Equal Weight’ at Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n McDonald’s (MCD +0.79%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Morgan Stanley.<\/span>
\n L Brands (LB +1.04%) was upgraded to ‘Outperform’ from ‘Market Perform’ at BMO Capital.<\/span>
\n Conn\u2019s (CONN +5.75%) announced that its Board of Directors authorized management to explore a full range of strategic alternatives for the company to enhance value for stockholders, including, but not limited to, a sale of the company.<\/span>
\n Colgate-Palmolive (CL +1.05%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays.<\/span>
\n ConocoPhillips (COP +0.11%) was upgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Sell’ at UBS.<\/span>
\n PetSmart (PETM +0.18%) was downgraded to ‘Equal Weight’ from ‘Overweight’ at Barclays.<\/span>
\n Intuitive Surgical (ISRG +1.19%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ at Goldman Sachs who also raised their price target on the stock to $584 from $466.<\/span>
\n Laboratory Corporation of America reported a 17.7% stake in LipoScience (LPDX unch) .<\/span>
\n EJF Capital reported a 5.9% passive stake in Sun Bancorp (SNBC +0.66%) .<\/span>
\n Cal-Maine Foods (CALM +4.08%) announced a 2-for-1 stock split effective Oct 31 for shareholders of record at the close on Oct 17.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s economic calendar:
\n 8:30 Gallup US Consumer Spending Measure
\n 12:30 PM TD Ameritrade IMX<\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: none<\/span>
\n Notable earnings after today’s close: CAMP, IDT, TCS<\/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