{"id":9849,"date":"2016-08-08T07:53:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T12:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=9849"},"modified":"2016-08-08T07:53:02","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T12:53:02","slug":"before-the-open-aug-8-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=9849","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (Aug 8)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> The <strong>Asian\/Pacific<\/strong> markets closed up across-the-board. Japan rallied 2.4%, and Hong Kong and Singapore did better than 1%. China, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan also did well. <strong>Europe<\/strong> is currently mostly up. Turkey is up more than 2%, the Czech Republic more than 1%, and Austria, Germany, Finland, Russia, Spain and Italy are also doing well. Futures in the <strong>States<\/strong> point towards a positive open for the cash market. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><!--more-->&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<br \/>\n<a style=\"font-weight: bold; font-size: medium;\" href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/pdfs\/LB%20weekly%2020160807.pdf\">LB Weekly<\/a> &#8211; the indexes, the breadth indicators, a look at the big picture<br \/>\n&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> The dollar is up. Oil and copper are up. Gold and silver are down. Bonds are down. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> As is typically the case on a Monday morning, I don&#8217;t have much to say that wasn&#8217;t said in the <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/pdfs\/LB%20weekly%2020160807.pdf\"><strong>weekly report<\/strong><\/a> published over the weekend. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> In it I said if the market follows through on the S&amp;P 500&#8217;s breakout and tries to leg up, I&#8217;ll want to see improvement from some of the breadth indicators. Some are diverging from the price action; others have flattened out. This is fine when the market rests, but when it tries to leg up, I want to see breadth keep up. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Oil is looking better to me. In my eyes it&#8217;s worth having some exposure. There was a cluster of support down near 39-40, and I&#8217;m seeing improvement elsewhere. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> That&#8217;s it for now. No need to repeat the <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/pdfs\/LB%20weekly%2020160807.pdf\"><strong>weekly report<\/strong><\/a>. I&#8217;m behind responding to email because I had to very quickly leave town Saturday morning and didn&#8217;t return until late last night. I&#8217;ll catch up today. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Stock headlines<\/strong> from barchart.com&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> U.S. Concrete (USCR -4.15%) was rated a new &#8216;Buy&#8217; at Suntrust Robinson with a price target of $75.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> EOG Resources (EOG +7.03%) was upgraded to &#8216;Buy&#8217; from &#8216;Hold&#8217; at Wunderlich Securities.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Wyerhaeuser (WY +0.70%) was downgraded to &#8216;Neutral&#8217; from &#8216;Buy&#8217; at DA Davidson.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Level 3 Communications (LVLT +0.59%) was rated a new &#8216;Buy&#8217; at BTIG with a price target of $63.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> JP Morgan Chase (JPM +2.70%) is down -0.5% in pre-market trading after it was downgraded to &#8216;Neutral&#8217; from &#8216;Buy&#8217; at Citigroup.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Mattress Firm Holding (MFRM +1.47%) surged 100% in pre-market trading after Steinhoff International Holdings NV bought the company for $2.4 billion.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Delta Air Lines (DAL +3.09%) fell nearly 2% in pre-market trading after a computer-system failure grounded all of the carrier&#8217;s flights across the U.S.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> U.S. Steel (X +1.92%) gained over 1% in after-hours trading after the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) said that U.S. Steel can proceed with its case that charges Chinese manufacturers of carbon and alloy steel of misappropriating U.S. Steel trade secrets that a U.S. judge had put on hold July 6.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Berkshire Hathaway ({=BRK\/B=}) lost almost 1% in after-hours trading after it reported Q2 operating EPS of $2,803, below consensus of $2,911.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Rackspace Holdings (RAX +10.24%) rose nearly 3% in after-hours trading, adding to last Friday&#8217;s +10% surge, on reports that Apollo Global Management LLC is reportedly offering $3.5 billion for the company.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> Lantheus Holdings (LNTH +54.24%) dropped almost 3% in after-hours trading after the company registered 17.8 million shares for sale for top share holder Avista Capital Partners.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> <strong>Today&#8217;s Economic Calendar<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 10:00 Labor market condition index<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"> 12:30 PM TD Ameritrade IMX<\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Today&#8217;s Earnings <a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/earnings\/upcoming\">here<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><strong>Other<\/strong>&#8230;<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/upgrades-downgrades\/\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a> from briefing.com<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/earnings\/2016\/08\/08-12\/\">Earnings<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/economic\/2016\/08\/08-12\">Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed up across-the-board. Japan rallied 2.4%, and Hong Kong and Singapore did better than 1%. China, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan also did well. Europe is currently mostly up. Turkey is up more than 2%, the Czech Republic more than 1%, and [&hellip;]<\/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\/9849"}],"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=9849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}