Monday, October 12, 2015

Bear Radar

Posted by Gary .....at 1:18 PM
Style Underperformer:
  • Mid-Cap Value -.51%
Sector Underperformers:
  • 1) Oil Service -3.62% 2) Gaming -2.25% 3) Road & Rail -2.09%
Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:
  • VMW, TWOU, LLY, CBPX, INFY, KYE, HYH, HTWR, FPL, CBA, EMO, TAP, SMCI, AAOI, MKTO, RJUS, AZZ, RDUS, ALDW, PTCT, WMGI, SHOP, KYN, JOY, AMID and RKUS
Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:
  • 1) CVLT 2) CNX 3) FL 4) HOG 5) USO
Stocks With Most Negative News Mentions:
  • 1) HOG 2) AA 3) CSX 4) CBPX 5) TWTR
Charts:
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Bull Radar

Posted by Gary .....at 1:03 PM
Style Outperformer:
  • Large-Cap Growth +.09%
Sector Outperformers:
  • 1) Airlines +1.68% 2) Utilities +.88% 3) HMOs +.77%
Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:
  • SKYW and BUFF
Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:
  • 1) MAS 2) GRPN 3) NTAP 4) LLY 5) EMC
Stocks With Most Positive News Mentions:
  • 1) ESPR 2) NOC 3) DGLY 4) EMC 5) FCAU
Charts:
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Morning Market Internals

Posted by Gary .....at 11:01 AM
NYSE Composite Index:
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Sunday, October 11, 2015

Monday Watch

Posted by Gary .....at 10:46 PM
Today's Headlines 
Bloomberg:  
  • Slow-Gear World Economy Vexes Officials at Fed, China Crossroads. Global policy makers used nearly all their tools to get the world economy out of a stall six years ago. What’s vexing them now is how to shift into higher gear. The prospect of the world’s biggest economy being healthy enough for its central bank to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade would usually be reason to cheer. So might efforts by the next-largest to move toward more balanced growth. A sluggish and uneven global recovery is making these turning points -- the Federal Reserve’s plan to raise rates and a slowing of China’s once high-flying economy -- harder to digest for central bankers and finance chiefs who met over the weekend in Lima. Clouding the picture is lackluster investment from companies sitting on cash, still too reluctant to deploy the capital that typically drives recoveries. "The world is not in crisis, but there’s a great sense of unease, and that sense of unease explains why globally, almost everywhere, private investment is much weaker than you would expect at this stage in the cycle," Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in the Peruvian capital at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting, which wrapped up Sunday.
  • This Analyst Says China's Stock Rally-to-Rout Is About to Repeat. In August, Thomas Schroeder correctly predicted a rebound in Chinese stocks wouldn’t last. Now, he says, the benchmark equity gauge will plumb new lows as a bear-market rally fails. The Shanghai Composite Index will climb 29 percent to 4,100 in the next three months, before slumping as much as 41 percent to 2,400 in early 2016, Schroeder, the Bangkok-based founder and managing director of Chart Partners Group Ltd., said in an interview in Singapore.   
  • China's Supertanker Traffic Jam Propels Global Shipping Rates. Supertankers hauling crude to China are contending with increased waiting times to unload as some on-land storage depots reach capacity amid an oil-buying binge by the world’s most populous nation. At least 19 two-million-barrel-capacity ships -- known as VLCCs -- were stationed off China’s coast for two weeks or more, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg on Oct. 9. In normal market conditions, most would normally arrive at a port and depart within a day, according to George Los, a New York-based analyst at shipbroker Charles R. Weber Co. As delays have increased, benchmark daily earnings for the tankers jumped above $100,000 this month for the first time since the global recession. This tanker traffic jam shows just how much crude the world’s second biggest importer is buying at a time when economic growth is forecast to slow to the lowest level in 25 years. China’s purchases have jumped almost 10 percent this year from 2014.
  • Asia Stocks Climb After Biggest Weekly Rally Since December 2011. Asian stocks rose after posting their steepest weekly advance since December 2011, with technology and industrial shares leading gains. The MSCI Asia Pacific Excluding Japan Index climbed 0.2 percent to 425.16 as of 9:32 a.m. in Hong Kong, with Tokyo markets closed for a holiday.
  • Fed’s Fischer Says Economy May Merit Liftoff Later This Year. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said the U.S. economy may be strong enough to merit an interest-rate increase by year end, while cautioning that policy makers are monitoring slower domestic job growth and international developments in deciding the precise timing of liftoff. At the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting in September, “most participants, myself included, anticipated that achieving these conditions would entail an initial increase in the federal funds rate later this year,” Fischer said Sunday in Lima, where attended the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. “Of course, that assessment was premised on the assumption of continued solid economic growth and further improvement in the labor market, which are key factors supporting our expectation that inflation will rise to our 2 percent objective,” he said in prepared remarks released by the Fed.
Wall Street Journal: 
  • Central Bankers Urge Fed to Get On With Interest-Rate Increase. Many officials at IMF meeting in Lima, Peru, say they would prefer certainty over agony of waiting. Talk of the Federal Reserve’s first rate increase in almost a decade tends to send many investors into a frenzy. For the world’s central bankers, it is increasingly likely to elicit sighs of resignation.
  • Iran Test-Fires New Missile. Test threatens to complicate nuclear deal reached in July with world powers. Iran test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles on Sunday, its state news agency reported, a move that could complicate the implementation of the country’s July nuclear deal even as its parliament ratified the historic pact’s outlines.
  • Profit Margins Take Spotlight in U.S. Earnings Season. Investors fret about companies’ stagnant revenues, lack of room for further cost cuts. As third-quarter U.S. corporate results roll out this week, many investors are putting an increased focus on profit margins as a sign of companies’ ability to propel earnings higher.
CNBC:
  • Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest Since 2001, U.N. Says. The Taliban insurgency has spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001, according to data compiled by the United Nations as well as interviews with numerous local officials in areas under threat. In addition, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan over the past two weeks has evacuated four of its 13 provincial offices around the country — the most it has ever done for security reasons — according to local officials in the affected areas.
Zero Hedge:
Telegraph:
Night Trading
  • Asian indices are +.25% to +1.25% on average.
  • Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 141.5 -1.0 basis point.
  • Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 79.25 -2.25 basis points.
  • S&P 500 futures -.14%.
  • NASDAQ 100 futures -.10%.

Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate 
  • (INFY)/14.11
Economic Releases 
  • None of note
Upcoming Splits
  • None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
  • The Fed's Lockhart speaking, Fed's Evans speaking, Fed's Brainard speaking and the BoJ Minutes could also impact trading today.
BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by real estate and industrial shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open mixed and to weaken into the afternoon, finishing modestly lower. The Portfolio is 25% net long heading into the week.

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Weekly Outlook

Posted by Gary .....at 7:00 PM
Week Ahead by Bloomberg. 
Wall St. Week Ahead by Reuters.
Weekly Economic Calendar by Briefing.com.

BOTTOM LINE: I expect US stocks to finish the week modestly lower on China bubble-bursting fears, Fed rate-hike worries, commodity weakness, rising European/Emerging Markets/US High-Yield debt angst, technical selling and earnings outlook concerns. My intermediate-term trading indicators are giving neutral signals and the Portfolio is 25% net long heading into the week.
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Saturday, October 10, 2015

Today's Headlines

Posted by Gary .....at 8:33 PM
Bloomberg:  
  • Fed Officials See 2015 Rate Rise Provided Economy Stays on Track. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year provided slower global growth doesn’t undermine forecasts for higher inflation, said two policy makers, while Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said the word from his counterparts abroad was “please do it.” “And we will do it, probably, at some point, but we’re not going to do it at a time that is not suitable for the United States economy," Fischer told CNN International in an interview in Lima, where he is attending a meeting of the Group of 20 major industrialized nations. Officials last month kept the rate near zero, where it has been since December 2008, to see if slower Chinese growth undermines their forecast that U.S. inflation will move back to the Fed’s 2 percent target, minutes of the September meeting released Thursday showed. Investors aren’t buying it. “The core of the committee is not pleased with the market essentially saying ‘the Fed will never hike, or at least not in 2015,”’ said Carl Riccadonna, chief U.S. economist for Bloomberg Intelligence in New York. The probability of a 2015 hike is now priced around 40 percent in federal funds futures markets, compared to above 60 percent ahead of last month’s Fed meeting, based on the assumption that the effective fed funds rate will be 0.375 percent after liftoff. “Policy makers do not want the odds of 2015 liftoff to fall too low -- they want to preserve the option to hike,” Riccadonna said. “This means we now have dovishly-inclined policy makers trying to ‘talk tough’ on the prospect for liftoff.”
  • Turkey Terror Blasts Reflect Tensions From Syria's War Next Door. Bomb explosions in Ankara that killed at least 95 people on Saturday brought Turkey’s political and ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the civil war in neighboring Syria, to a grim new level. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadliest terror attacks in Turkey’s recent history though suspicion quickly turned to Islamic State. The blasts targeted a gathering before a “peace and democracy” march called to urge an end to violence between the government and Kurdish militants. The carnage in Ankara, the Turkish capital, came as U.S.-allied Kurdish forces affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were preparing to advance toward Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa in Syria, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, who studies the Kurdish conflict at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara.
  • Citigroup’s Morse Says Commodities Drop Hasn’t Hit Bottom. Ed Morse, Citigroup Inc.’s global head of commodities research, said the worst slump in commodities prices in a generation isn’t over. “I think we are not at the bottom because we are still seeing consistent cost deflation,” Morse said Saturday at a meeting of the Institute of International Finance in Lima, Peru. The Bloomberg Commodity Index on Sept. 30 capped its worst quarterly loss since the depths of the recession in 2008. The economy in China, the biggest consumer of grains, energy and metals, is expanding at the slowest pace in two decades just as producers struggle to ease surpluses. Alcoa Inc., once a symbol of American industrial might, plans to split itself in two, while Chesapeake Energy Corp. cut its workforce by 15 percent.
Wall Street Journal: 
  • Turkish Capital Ankara Hit by Explosions, Killing at Least 95. More than 240 wounded after deadliest terror attacks in Turkey’s modern history. At least 95 people were killed in twin blasts in the Turkish capital on Saturday, as the deadliest terror attack in the country’s modern history laid bare the precarious security environment just three weeks before snap elections. The explosions, which occurred outside Ankara’s train station at 10 a.m. as left-wing unions and Kurdish politicians gathered some 14,000 people for an antiwar march, also wounded 246 people, leaving 48 of them in a critical condition, the prime minister’s office said in a statement late Saturday. “Our nation, our people and our democracy have been targeted by a big terror attack. This assault is not on just one group, on our citizens participating in the rally or a particular political organization. This attack is on the unity of our country,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after an emergency meeting, vowing to bring those responsible to justice.
  • America’s Fading Footprint in the Middle East. As Russia bombs and Iran plots, the U.S. role is shrinking—and the region’s major players are looking for new ways to advance their own interests. Despised by some, admired by others, the U.S. has been the Middle East’s principal power for decades, providing its allies with guidance and protection. Now, however, with Russia and Iran thrusting themselves boldly into the region’s affairs, that special role seems to be melting away. As seasoned politicians and diplomats survey the mayhem, they struggle to recall a moment when America counted for so little in the Middle East—and when it was held in such contempt, by friend and foe alike. “It’s the lowest ebb since World War II for U.S. influence and engagement in the region,” said Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Afghanistan and before that as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan.
  • Shut Up—Or We’ll Shut You Down. Elizabeth Warren isn’t the only one trying to silence her opponents. Elizabeth Warren recently drove out a think-tank scholar for having the nerve to report that a new federal regulation could cost billions, but the progressive censor movement is broad and growing. Advocates of climate regulation are urging the Obama Administration to investigate people who don’t share their views.
  • The Real Obama Doctrine. Henry Kissinger long ago recognized the problem: a talented vote-getter, surrounded by lawyers, who is overly risk-averse.
Barron's:
  • Had bullish commentary on (MAT), (RJF) and (MU).
CNBC:
  • Islamic State closes in on Syrian city of Aleppo. Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the northern city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite an intensifying Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group. 
  • China warns US it will not allow violations of its waters. China said on Friday it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in the name of freedom of navigation, as the United States considers sailing warships close to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Zero Hedge:
Telegraph: 
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