Wednesday Watch

Evening Headlines
Bloomberg:

• Oil Falls for a Second Day in New York as OPEC Discusses Emergency Meeting. Oil dropped for a second day as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries considered talks about increasing production as fighting disrupts supplies from Libya. Futures dropped as much as 0.6 percent after Kuwait’s oil minister said OPEC members are weighing an “urgent” meeting to determine whether more output is needed, as Libyan rebel fighters prepared an offensive to regain a town lost to Muammar Qaddafi’s forces. U.S. crude supplies rose the most since November last week, the American Petroleum Institute said. Crude for April delivery decreased as much as 66 cents to $104.36 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and was at $104.42 at 1:07 p.m. Sydney time. Yesterday, the contract lost 42 cents from the previous settlement of $105.44, the highest since Sept. 26, 2008. Prices are up 28 percent from a year ago.
• Portugal Must Boost Investor Trust as Yields Rise, Ambassador to U.S. Says. Portugal must shore up investor confidence by meeting deficit-reduction targets and spurring economic growth, Nuno Brito, the country’s ambassador to the U.S., said as the nation prepares to sell 1 billion euros ($1.39 billion) in debt with yields hovering close to record highs. “One of our main tasks is to rebuild trust,” Brito, who assumed his post last month, said in an interview at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York yesterday. “We have no option but to be overambitious.” Portugal’s 10-year bond yield reached 7.636 percent on Feb. 10, the highest since at least 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as concern mounted the nation will need to follow Greece and Ireland in requesting a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Portugal’s sale of up to 1 billion euros of September 2013 notes today will be its second debt auction this year.
  
• China Says Property Demand Driven by 'Unreasonable' Speculation. China’s rising property market in the past few years was driven in part by “unreasonable” demand from speculators, according to Qi Ji, Vice Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. “The government’s property curbs are targeted principally at those who don’t have an immediate need for housing as accommodation,” Qi said in a press briefing in Beijing today. “Our basic aim is to direct the limited supply of housing to those who need it the most.”
• BofA(BAC) is 'Very Active Seller' Of Commercial Real Estate, Risk Chief Says. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the biggest U.S. lender, is a “very active seller” of commercial real estate as the firm seeks to limit losses on assets accumulated through acquisitions, Chief Risk Officer Bruce Thompson said. Commercial real estate loans in the core portfolio fell 28 percent in 2010 to $48 billion at the end of the year, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender said in a presentation on its website today. The decline is part of the company’s strategy to reduce so-called legacy assets, Thompson said today at an investor presentation. Thompson is working with Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan to decrease the chance of writedowns after the company repaid U.S. bailout funds that were required to bolster capital drained by lending losses.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has shut down a website used to disclose the way the department intends to spend money. The Advanced Acquisition Planning system enabled government program managers, private vendors and the general public to track the more than $13 billion in federal contracts issued by the agency every year, according to Bloomberg data. "The system was retired by the Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 28, 2011," according to a statement on the website. No explanation was provided. Federal acquisition regulations require that an advanced acquisition plan be done for any contract expected to exceed $100,000 in order to maximize opportunities for small business participation.
• California No Longer 'Magnet' as Rate of Population Growth Slows in Census. California saw higher growth in its inland cities and counties than on the coast and found double- digit increases in its Asian and Hispanic populations over the past decade, according to 2010 Census data released today. Coastal areas tended to be “hostile to business” and development, while jobs and cheaper housing drove people inland, according to Joel Kotkin, author of, “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050,” a book published last year about the nation’s demographic changes.
• Australian Climate Plan Has 'Backfired' on Gillard, Lawmaker Windsor Says. The Australian government’s handling of climate change has “backfired” and Prime Minister Julia Gillard may not get a chance to submit the legislation to parliament, independent lawmaker Tony Windsor said. “I think this has backfired on the government,” Windsor, also a member of the Labor government’s multiparty climate change committee, said today in a phone interview from Bundarra, New South Wales state. “I think people want to see the detail of the climate plan rather than just the framework.” Gillard’s support fell to a record low in a Newspoll published in the Australian newspaper yesterday as voters rejected Gillard’s climate plans. The government wants to introduce a carbon price it hasn’t set from July next year before moving to an emissions trading plan, according a document released by its multiparty committee.
• Hacking of DuPont(DD), J&J(JNJ), GE(GE) Were Google(GOOG)-Type Attacks. The FBI broke the news to executives at DuPont Co. late last year that hackers had cracked the company’s computer networks for the second time in 12 months, according to a confidential Dec. 9, 2010, e-mail discussing the investigation. About a year earlier, DuPont had been hit by the same China- based hackers who struck Google Inc. (GOOG) and unlike Google, DuPont kept the intrusion secret, internal e-mails from cyber-security firm HBGary Inc. show. As DuPont probed the incidents, executives concluded they were the target of a campaign of industrial spying, the e-mails show. The attacks on DuPont and on more than a dozen other companies are discussed in about 60,000 confidential e-mails that HBGary, hired by some of the targeted businesses, said were stolen from it on Feb. 6 and posted on the Internet by a group of hacker-activists known as Anonymous. The companies attacked include Walt Disney Co. (DIS), Sony Corp. (6758), Johnson & Johnson, and General Electric Co., the e-mails show. The incidents described in the stolen e-mails portray industrial espionage by hackers based in China, Russia and other countries. U.S. law enforcement agencies say the attacks have intensified in number and scope over the past two years. “We are on the losing end of the biggest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the history of the planet,” said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who chaired a U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence task force on U.S. cyber security in 2010.

Wall Street Journal:

• U.S. Sees Stalemate Emerging in Libya. The U.S. believes Col. Moammar Gadhafi has solidified control in parts of Libya, creating a stalemate with rebels and raising the stakes in the Obama administration's internal debate about whether to take military action to help the opposition, officials said. Pro-regime forces pressed into the rebel-held city of Zawiya, near the capital, and appeared to have halted the opposition's momentum to the east in fighting Tuesday. With the struggle appearing to settle into a standoff, the Obama administration, working with allies, looked into options for intervention, while the European Union prepared to announce broader sanctions on the Libyan government, including an asset freeze. Rebels in their base in the eastern city of Benghazi, after first suggesting they had made an amnesty offer to the Libyan leader, denied any back-channel negotiations were under way.
• China's Debt Burden Limits Policy Leeway. New Chinese government figures show its national debt load remains low compared with other major economies. But including the debts of local governments and many parts of the state-owned banking sector, as many economists say is proper, shows the constraints facing Beijing in the fight against inflation, its top economic priority. Adding up the official debt data from these other parts of the government as well as from state banks and estimated debt of asset-management companies puts China's total government liabilities at $3.55 trillion, equivalent to 59% of GDP. Some economists who follow the issue say those official data underestimate items like nonperforming loans created by a lending surge over the past two years. Stephen Green, China economist at Standard Chartered Bank, estimates total debt, including contingent liabilities, at 77% of GDP. Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Beijing-based research firm Dragonomics, puts the total debt at 75% of GDP.
• In Health Law, Rx for Trouble. A provision intended to limit tax breaks for over-the-counter drugs in the health-care overhaul is creating headaches for doctors and new complications for retailers and pharmacies.
• US Official: Pressure Is On Emerging Economies to Change Ways. Emerging economies such as China and India must take steps to improve the openness and access to their markets, a top State Department official said Tuesday, both for the success of international trade talks and the broader effort to rebalance the global economy.
• Europe Blinks on Bank Test. Regulators Seen Easing 'Stress' Gauge, Undercutting Effort to Restore Confidence. European officials are poised to let regulators in individual countries use their own definitions of a key gauge of banks' health in coming "stress tests," threatening to undermine efforts to buttress faith in the Continent's ailing financial system. The new European Banking Authority, which is running the tests on 88 of Europe's biggest banks, has told regulators and bankers that the exams are likely to rely on each country's definition of an important capital ratio known as Tier 1, according to people familiar with the matter. If the plan goes through, some skeptical bankers and regulators worry, it could undermine the effort to end the European financial crisis. They fear a rerun of one of the key weaknesses in last year's stress tests by the European Union. Those results were widely panned for giving passing grades to almost all banks, including some that subsequently required taxpayer bailouts. Last year, regulators let each country use a local standard of the Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of a bank's ability to withstand unexpected losses. That flexibility wasn't widely known when the results were announced, and the differences made it difficult to compare banks across Europe. The latest stress tests would essentially repeat the same process. Banks that fall below a certain capital threshold in a deteriorating economic environment will be forced to raise more capital. The trouble is that regulators in different countries have different methods of calculating the Tier 1 ratio. The stress tests are unlikely to establish a pan-European standard, according to the people familiar with the matter. Some regulators and bank executives worry that the lack of uniformity will damage the tests' credibility. "We're falling into the same trap," said an official at a major European bank.
• Unions Oppose Pension Changes in California Talk. A coalition of influential labor groups in California opposes some public-pension changes that Gov. Jerry Brown has considered as part of a compromise with Republican lawmakers, further complicating the governor's hope for a quick resolution to budget talks to close a $26.6 billion deficit, said people familiar with the matter.
• Seasoned Prosecutors Prep for 'War'. For the next 10 weeks, prosecutors will battle Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam in courtroom 17B in lower Manhattan. But they will win or lose the insider-trading case in a nearby "war room."
• Our Man-Made Energy Crisis. There's plenty of oil and no fundamental reason to expect prices of $200 per barrel. But that doesn't excuse the administration's punitive approach toward the industry.

CNBC:

• An Open Letter From an Egyptian CEO. The following is an open letter written by the CEO of a large company based in Egypt. He is not being named out of retribution fears and concerns for his safety ... The situation worsening ... the military is barely holding on ... anarchy extending ... and the original young demonstrators are marginalized already. The economic meltdown is huge. If I may make some suggestions ...
• Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages. Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Business Insider:

• How to Make Sure You Never See Charlie Sheen on the Internet Again. Enough already. If you're as sick of Charlie Sheen as we are, some entrepreneurial developers have found a way to block him from your web browser forever. Mashable found a browser extension from the folks at Free Art & Technology that will erase all mentions of Sheen and buzzwords like #tigerblood and #winning.
• Disturbing Video of Millions of Dead Fish at California's Redondo Beach.
  

Zero Hedge:

• What Happens After A "No Fly Zone" Is Instituted Over Libya? (Stratfor)
• Video Highlights of Today's Unreported Iranian Protest.
  

Forbes:

• We Suffer Unhealthy Budgets, Thanks to ObamaCare. This year's budget battle is only the beginning. Thanks to the new health care law, next year's budget debate is shaping up to be a real battle royale. In mid-February, President Obama released his 2011-2012 budget proposal, which would take effect this year on Oct. 1. Missing from that document was any accounting of the true cost of implementing ObamaCare. "How many federal bureaucrats does it take to carry out President Barack Obama's health care overhaul?" wrote the Associated Press. "Don't expect to find an easy answer in his new budget." The president's budget is so opaque that Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich.--the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Medicare and tax laws--has wondered whether Democrats are now trying to hide the costs of their signature piece of legislation. In reality, the president and his congressional allies have obscured the costs of ObamaCare since the beginning. In March of last year, for instance, just a few days before the health care bill became law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) identified "at least $50 billion" in costs associated with implementing the law for which the "authority to undertake such spending is not provided." Just a few months later, the Congressional Research Service stated that the number of new federal bureaucracies created by the health care law was "unknowable." So the White House is either hiding the cost of implementation--or simply doesn't know what that cost will be.
• Are We Thwarting Medical Innovation? The movement to repeal the health care reform act in the U.S. merely touches the surface of a deeper problem. A better “repeal” agenda would focus on undoing, and re-thinking, much of the FDA regulatory regime and other barriers to innovation in health care. Anyone who has benefited from an MRI exam, a new drug therapy or a high-tech surgical procedure knows the value of biomedical innovation. And anyone with a disorder that still defies effective care knows the need to keep innovation going. What’s more, this innovation pays multiple economic benefits. For over a century, new medical treatments and the businesses that bring them to market have employed millions of people, helping the rest of us to be healthier and more productive in our own lines of work. Yet lately the virtuous cycle has begun to bog down. In the past 15 years, despite a doubling of federal funds for biomedical R&D, the number of new drugs approved by the FDA and coming to market has decreased by nearly half — from around 40 per year in the late 1990s to a little over 20 per year since 2005. Pre-market testing to meet FDA requirements has become such a huge factor in drug development budgets that it’s hard for companies to even consider working on new products with limited market potential. Other obstacles have grown too, mostly from a long-running accretion of government controls and bureaucratic bottlenecks.

CNN Money:

• National Debt: 'Time for Gridlock is Over'. As lawmakers continued to butt heads over how much spending should be cut over the next seven months, a few senators on Tuesday were trying to keep the focus where they think it belongs -- the next several decades. "The time for gridlock is over. We do not have time to go around the bush and around the bush and around the bush to debate the specifics of our perfect solutions," said Republican Sen. Mike Crapo.
• Low, Low Prices: Target(TGT) Beats Wal-Mart(WMT).
  

The Hill:

• Senator Majority Harry Reid(D-Nev.) Attacks GOP Budget for Trying to Cut Money for Nevada's Cowboy Poetry Festival. Senate Majority Harry Reid (D-Nev.) slammed the Republicans' budget proposal on Tuesday as 'mean-spirited' and complained it would eliminate money for a cowboy poetry festival that brings tens of thousands of tourists to Nevada. “The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1, eliminates National Public Broadcasting," said Reid in a floor speech. "It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.” The Republican plan would slash $57 billion from the budget for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. That budget is likely to face a vote in the Senate on Tuesday evening.

Politico:

• 'Sting' Boosts Efforts to Ax NPR Funds. Within hours after a video emerged showing NPR’s fundraising chief disparaging tea partiers as “racist” and saying the broadcaster would be better off without federal funding, Republicans in Congress seeking to de-fund NPR said they’d be only too happy to oblige. “We agree that NPR and PBS would be fine without taxpayer subsidies,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a tea party favorite who just last week introduced legislation to stop taxpayer subsidies to public broadcasting. “Forcing taxpayers to give public broadcasting hundreds of millions of dollars makes little sense when we’re facing a $14 trillion debt and there are already thousands of educational and entertainment choices in the media.

USA Today:

• Smart Meters Raise Suspicions About Accuracy. Coast to coast, from Maine to Marin County, Calif., the number of homes being outfitted with smart meters that keep a close eye on homeowner electricity use is on the rise. And so is the number of folks who think smart meters are a dumb idea.

Reuters:

• Libya No-Fly Zone Should Not Be U.S.-Led Effort - Clinton. The United States wants to see the international community support a no-fly zone over Libya, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday, saying it was important it was not a U.S.-led effort. "We want to see the international community support it (a no-fly zone)," she told Sky News. "I think it's very important that this not be a U.S.-led effort because this comes from the people of Libya themselves. This doesn't come from the outside, this doesn't come from some Western power or some Gulf country saying 'This is what you should do.'" She also said it was important that the United Nations make the decision on what to do about Libya, not the United States.
• Michigan Workers Jam Capital to Protest Union Plan. In a scene reminiscent of Wisconsin, hundreds of pro-union protesters jammed the Michigan state Capitol on Tuesday to oppose a bill that would give emergency managers authority to break labor deals to revive failing schools and cities.
• CFTC Swaps Trading Plan May Stifle Market - Traders.
• Ships Entering U.S. to Face New Ballast Water Rules. To keep new invasive species out of U.S. waters such as the Great Lakes, the United States must enact stricter rules on treating ship ballast water under a settlement reached on Tuesday with environmental groups. Under the agreement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will settle on new rules by November that will go into effect in December 2013 to give shippers the chance to comply, conservation groups said. "This settlement should prompt EPA to treat 'living pollution' as aggressively as it would an oil spill or toxic release," said Thom Cmar of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups involved in the settlement.
• Finisar(FNSR) Sees Weak Q4, Shares Plummet. Network equipment maker Finisar Corp forecast a dismal fourth quarter, blaming a surprise inventory pile-up at telecom equipment makers in China, and its shares plunged 38 percent in extended trading. The lower-than-expected outlook casts a pall of gloom on the fiber optics sector, which surged last year as wireless carriers built new LTE networks and invested in optical switches to carry a surge in wireless traffic. Finisar sells components to manufacturers of fiber optic switches that are used to manage and unclog telecom networks. Shares of larger rival JDS Uniphase(JDSU) fell 15 percent to $21.50. Oplink Communications(OPLK) slipped 11 percent, while Occlaro(OCLR) was down 14 pct at $14.31. The weak outlook from Finisar marks the second bad news for the sector in as many days, after fiber optics switch maker Ciena surprised investors with a weak second-quarter outlook. . "Things that we had forecast only at the end of last year...all of a sudden have been reduced dramatically," a Finisar executive said in a conference call with analysts. The company expects reduced order rates and capacity demands in the fourth quarter, but said it would be surprised if the inventory correction lasted three quarters. It added the problem is an industry-wide one now and was not limited to just one customer in China.
  
• Texas Instruments(TXN) Earnings Target Misses Street. Texas Instruments Inc issued a current-quarter earnings target that was slightly below Wall Street estimates, blaming weaker-than-expected demand last month for chips used in personal computers. Shares in TI, which brings in 15 percent of its revenue from the PC market, fell almost 1 percent in after-hours trade, canceling almost all of their gains during regular trading.
• Honeywell(HON) Sees Q1 at Upper End of View; To Buy Back Shares. Diversified U.S. manufacturer Honeywell International Inc expects first-quarter sales and profit to be at the high end of its previously provided outlook, and authorized a $3 billion share buyback program. Honeywell, which also reaffirmed its 2011 forecast, said it would buy back shares during 2011 to offset the dilutive impact of employee stock-based compensation plans.

Financial Times:

• Top Goldman(GS) Executives on Galleon Witness List. Goldman Sachs'(GS) two most senior executives, Lloyd Blankfein and David Viniar, chief executive and chief financial officer respectively, were among the high-profile names on a list of those who may be called as witnesses in the insider trading trial of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of Galleon Group.
• Banks Are Bigger Risk Takers Than Top Hedge Funds.
  

Toronto Star:

• Yemeni Army Fires at Student Protesters, Wounding 98. The Yemeni government escalated its efforts to stop mass protests calling for the president’s ouster on Tuesday, with soldiers firing rubber bullets and tear gas at students camped at a university in the capital in a raid that left at least 98 people wounded, officials said. The army stormed the Sanaa University campus hours after thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in the capital, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were wounded as the guards fought to control the situation, police said.Yemen has been rocked by weeks of protests against Saleh, inspired by recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia that drove out those nations’ leaders. Saleh, a key U.S. ally in the campaign against Al Qaeda, has been in power 32 years.

Xinhua:

• Egypt's Muslim-Christian Clash Escalates. Clashes between Egyptian Muslims and Coptic Christians escalated on Tuesday after Coptic protestors blocked a main road in Cairo for more than two hours. Hundreds of salafists, or conservative Muslims, claimed for regaining two women who they believed were held in a church after they proclaimed their Islam belief, state MENA news agency reported. The salafists stressed the importance of not changing the second article of the constitution as the Copts called on in the nationwide demonstration, which affirms that Islam is the only source for jurisdiction. The clashes between salafists and Copts in the Autostrad road in southeast Cairo left at least one Copt dead and five people wounded, according to local media. Meanwhile, thousands of Coptic protestors continued a sit-in for the fourth day Tuesday in front of the Egyptian Radio and TV building protesting over a church that was torched in a village in Helwan Governorate, south of Cairo. They demanded ending of the sectarian clashes against them and rebuilding the burnt Shahedain church. They also called for providing protection for Copts and securing their houses along with paying compensations for the losses inflicted on them. A fight among members of a Muslim family on Friday night over the romantic relationship between a Muslim girl and a Christian merchant left two dead, including the girl's father. After the funeral, crowds of Muslims from the village directed to the Shahedain church and broke into the church before they torched it. Egypt's new Prime Minister Esssam Sharaf promised the Coptic protestors to reclaim the land of the burnt church and rebuild it. Any marriage relationship between Muslim and Christian is forbidden according to Islamic jurisdictions.

China Securities Journal:

• China may introduce a new round of control measures on the real estate market if the property prices do not stabilize, citing Jiang Weixin, minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. The government may work out more detailed measures on how to contain the rises in property prices, Jiang said.

China Digital Times:

• Latest Directives From the Chinese Ministry of Truth, March 2-7, 2011. The following examples of censorship instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation. State Council Information Office: In China 94% Are Unhappy; Top-Heavy Concentration of Wealth March 7, 2011 From the State Council Information Office: All websites are requested to immediately remove the story “In China 94% Are Unhappy; Top-Heavy Concentration of Wealth” and related information. Forums, blogs, micro-blogs, and other interactive spaces are not to discuss the matter.

Evening Recommendations
Janney Montgomery:

• Rated (RUE) Buy, target $38.
• Reiterated Buy on (DKS), target $44.

RBC Capital:

• Rated (DISH) Outperform, target $30.

Night Trading

• Asian equity indices are -.50% to +.50% on average.
• Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 105.50 -3.0 basis points.
  
• Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 116.75 -2.75 basis points.
  
• S&P 500 futures -.10%.
  
• NASDAQ 100 futures -.19%.

Morning Preview Links

Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate

• (VC)/1.29
• (MW)/.19
• (JAS)/1.53
• (CWTR)/-.25
• (MCP)/-.02
  
• (HRB)/.03
• (NAV)/.26
• (AEO)/.43
• (KFY)/.30
• (PLCE)/1.00
  

Economic Releases
10:00 am EST

• Wholesale Inventories for January are estimated to rise +.9% versus a +1.0% gain in December.

10:30 am EST

• Bloomberg consensus estimates call for a weekly crude oil inventory build of +1,000.000 barrels versus a -364,000 barrel decline the prior week. Distillate supplies are expected to fall by -500,000 barrels versus a -751,000 barrel decline the prior week. Gasoline inventories are estimated to fall by -1,500,000 barrels versus a -3,590,000 barrel decline the prior week. Finally, Refinery Utilization is expected unch. versus a +1.5% gain the prior week.

Upcoming Splits

• None of note
  

Other Potential Market Movers

• The weekly MBA mortgage applications report, $21 Billion 10-Year T-Notes Auction, Citi Resources Conference, Wedbush Morgan Tech/Media/Telecom Mgmt Access Conference, UBS Tech Conference, CSFB Equipment/Semis/Networking Conference, UBS Autos Conference, Citi Financial Services Conference, BofA Merrill Consumer Conference, (HRS) analyst meeting, (BHI) analyst conference, (XOM) analyst meeting and the (HON) investor conference could also impact trading today.
  

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by financial and automaker shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open modestly lower and to maintain losses into the afternoon. The Portfolio is 100% net long heading into the day.