{"id":8195,"date":"2014-12-24T08:45:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T13:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=8195"},"modified":"2014-12-24T08:45:30","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T13:45:30","slug":"before-the-open-dec-24-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=8195","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Dec 24)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Wednesday.<\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mostly up. China dropped 2% and India 1.1%. Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore did well. Half of Europe was closed today. The markets that traded were mixed. Italy and Russia moved up. France moved down. Futures here in the States point towards a positive open for the cash market.
\n<\/span>
\n The dollar down. Oil and copper are down. Gold and silver are down. <\/span>
\n The Dow, SPX and MID hit new all time highs yesterday. The RUT is close, and the Nas has a little more work to do to take out its dot com bubble high. <\/span>
\nThe indicators have moved off their lows but have to continue moving up to support the market’s strength.<\/span>
\nEnergy stocks have improved…not hard considering the hole they were in. Can they continue in the face of Saudi Arabia telling the world they will not decrease production even if oil dropped to $20?<\/span>
\nBiotechs have weakened a bunch lately. <\/span>
\nBias remains to the upside. I’m watching the indicators. They need to climb back to their highs. Otherwise the upside will be limited in terms of both time and price movement. <\/span>
\nYou know the routine here. Today is a half day…tomorrow is a day off. Enjoy. I’ll be here for the open and first hour. Then I’m off to the ski slopes. <\/span>
\n Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\nBAE Systems (BAESY +0.07%) was awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion from the U.S. Army for the manufacturing and development of 289 Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles, or AMPVs.<\/span>
\nVirgin America (VA -0.36%) was initiated with a ‘Buy’ at Deutsche Bank with a price target of $44,<\/span>
\nSy Jacobs reported a 9.2% passive stake in Southern Missouri Bancorp (SMBC -2.53%) .<\/span>
\nPerry Ellis (PERY -0.20%) files to sell 1.5 million shares of common stock for holders.<\/span>
\nOz Management reported a 5.39% passive stake in Qunar (QUNR -1.19%) .<\/span>
\nThe WSJ reported that Sony (SNE +0.38%) is mulling sale of its music publishing business that owns the copyrights to most of the Beatles\u2019 songs and is estimated to be worth between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.<\/span>
\nCanaan VII LP reported a 12.6% stake in LendingClub (LC -4.07%) .<\/span>
\nGabelli reported a 5.86% stake in Volcano (VOLC +0.22%) .<\/span>
\nCal-Maine Foods (CALM +0.64%) reported Q2 EPS of 76 cents, weaker than consensus of 85 cents.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\nToday’s economic calendar:
\n7:00 MBA Mortgage Applications
\n8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
\n9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
\n10:30 EIA Petroleum Inventories
\n11:30 Results of $29B, 7-Year Note Auction
\n12:00 PM EIA Natural Gas Inventory
\nNYSE closes at 1:00 PM SIFMA closes 2:00 PM<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\n Notable earnings before today’s open: none<\/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