{"id":9547,"date":"2016-03-21T07:43:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T12:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=9547"},"modified":"2016-03-21T07:43:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T12:43:25","slug":"before-the-open-mar-21-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=9547","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Mar 21)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. <\/span>
\n The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed. China rallied better than 2%; India also did well. Singapore was weak. Europe currently leans to the downside. Italy is up 1%; Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Poland are also doing well. Russia is down 1%; The Czech Republic is also weak. Futures here in the States point towards an up open for the cash market. <\/span>
\n—————
\n<\/span>S&P Select – Week in Review<\/a>
\n——————
\nThe dollar is up a small amount. Oil is flat, copper is up. Gold is down, silver is up. Bonds are down. <\/span>
\n The S&P has rallied 240 points since bottoming in mid February, and this month it has moved up 11 out of 14 days – heck of a run that can’t last much longer. I’m not saying a top has to be put in place and the lows tested again, I’m just saying a rest is needed. <\/span>
\n The internals have done much better on this rally than on the October rally. The AD line and AD volume lines have climbed to higher levels and maintained them. The percentage of stocks trading above various moving averages is much higher. We’ve gotten a huge spike in new highs. <\/span>
\n Simply stated, strength is much more broad-based right now than it was last year. This is a great and constructive development that more likely than not will lead to higher prices, even if there is a little weakness in the near term. <\/span>
\n Overall I lean to the upside and expect further gains, although we need to be much more careful chasing stocks higher here. More after the open. <\/span>
\nStock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com…<\/span>
\n Valspar (VAL -1.02%) surged over 30% in pre-market trading after the company was acquired by Sherwin-Williams for $9.3 billion. Sherwin-Williams (SHW +0.56%) is up over 2% on the news.<\/span>
\n Tesla (TSLA +2.81%) was upgraded to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold ad Argus Research with a price target of $333.<\/span>
\n Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (HOT +5.47%) said it has accepted an improved bid from Marriott International (MAR +1.89%) to purchase the company for $13.6 billion.<\/span>
\n Knight Transportation (KNX +4.15%) was downgraded to ‘Market perform’ from ‘Outperform at Cowen.<\/span>
\n Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX -9.13%) was downgraded to ‘Underperform’ from ‘Neutral’ at Mizuho Securities.<\/span>
\n Nordstrom (JWN +0.52%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Overweight’ at Piper Jaffray.<\/span>
\n Dover (DOV +0.66%) was downgraded to ‘Neutral’ from ‘Buy’ at SunTrust.<\/span>
\n Fiserv (FISV +0.94%) was downgraded to ‘Market Perform’ from ‘Outperform’ at Oppenheimer.<\/span>
\n Amazon.com (AMZN -1.32%) reported a 9.99% passive stake in Air Transport Services Group (ATSG +3.04%), making it the second-largest shareholder of the company.<\/span>
\n Chesapeake Energy (CHK +2.51%) reported that as of March 18 it has issued or agreed to issue 17.26 million shares, or 2.6% of shares outstanding, in exchange for $105 million in contingent convertible senior notes.<\/span>
\n Flex Pharma (FLKS +1.38%) filed a $125 million mixed securities shelf.<\/span>
\nEarnings and Economic Numbers<\/strong> from seekingalpha.com…<\/span>
\n Today’s Economic Calendar
\n 2:45 Fed’s Lacker: Central bankers outlook
\n 8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index
\n 10:00 Existing Home Sales
\n 12:30 PM Fed’s Lockhart speech
\n 8:30 PM Fed’s Bullard: Economic Outlook<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
\nToday’s Earnings here<\/a><\/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><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed. China rallied better than 2%; India also did well. Singapore was weak. Europe currently leans to the downside. Italy is up 1%; Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Poland are also doing well. Russia is down 1%; The Czech Republic is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}