Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

- The Federal Reserve left the benchmark interest rate as low as zero and said it’s prepared to purchase longer-term Treasury securities to resuscitate lending and the economy. The Fed is “prepared to purchase longer-term Treasury securities if evolving circumstances indicate that such transactions would be particularly effective in improving conditions in private credit markets,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after meeting in Washington.

- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the department is considering a “range of options” for its financial rescue plan, with the goal of preserving the private banking system. Geithner was asked about the prospects of bank nationalization before a meeting with several officials charged with providing oversight for the $700 billion financial rescue effort. He said the administration would move “relatively soon” to announce its strategy.

- The cost of protecting corporate bonds from default fell to the lowest in 11 weeks amid speculation the U.S. government may create a so-called bad bank to hold toxic assets blamed for causing the global credit crisis. Benchmark credit-default swap indexes tied to companies in North America and Europe reached the lowest since Nov. 11. Contracts on Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc reached two-week lows on optimism central banks and governments may stabilize the financial system. Contracts on Wells Fargo & Co., which reported its first quarterly loss since 2001, narrowed as the bank said it doesn’t need more federal aid. Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment-Grade index of 125 companies in the U.S. and Canada, which fall as sentiment improves, dropped 8.5 basis points to 190.5 basis points as of 9:53 a.m. in New York, according to Barclays Capital. The Markit iTraxx Financial index of 25 European banks and insurers dropped two basis points to 115.

- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the change promised by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign means he must apologize for U.S. “crimes” against Iran, including American support for a 1953 coup in the country and the backing of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

- Credit-default swaps dealers will preview a new standard for contracts in North America tomorrow as the industry pushes to curb risks and smooth the transition to a central clearinghouse for the $28 trillion market. Markit Group Ltd., a data provider and owner of benchmark indexes in the privately traded market, will host a conference in New York where creators of the contract will discuss the changes, the London-based company said in an e-mailed statement this week. Rule makers for the market are making trading more transparent and uniform as regulators press them to mitigate the risk of industry losses from the bilateral contracts. “The new contract has strong implications for reducing systemic risk and improving operational efficiency,” Markit said in an invitation to the event.

- Gold dropped the most in two weeks in London as shares advanced around the world on speculation government measures will help revive the global economy, reducing demand for the precious metal as a haven. “Gold might have reached a temporary peak, and profit- taking is of course another factor,” Fertig said, adding that the metal may fall to $850 an ounce in coming days. Bullion has also lost its negative correlation with the dollar in the past week, he said.

- Copper prices, headed for the first monthly gain since June, are poised to drop at least 33% as slowing growth in China erodes metal demand, said Gijsbert Groenewegen, a Gold Arrow Capital Management fund manager. Copper prices rose in January, even after the latest data available show China’s electricity output slid for four straight months through November, a sign of slower growth. An economic slump in China, the world’s biggest copper user, will spur a drop in copper prices as consumption slips, Groenewegen said. “All you need to do is look at China’s electricity use to see that growth there is going to be worse than people are expecting,” said NY-based Groenewegen. Prices will drop to at least $1 a pound and may trade as low as 70 cents, he said.

- Veteran startup investor Dixon Doll’s firm is close to raising a $505 million fund, making it the second Silicon Valley venture-capital company to attract money this year in the midst of a recession.

- M.D.C. Holdings Inc.(MDC) is unique among homebuilders: most analysts recommend buying the stock. The builder is the top-rated stock in the industry not for the double ovens it puts in its gourmet kitchens or the Spanish tile roofs but for the $1.4 billion in cash and investments it holds. Six of eight analysts advise buying M.D.C., giving it a 75 percent positive rating. Toll Brothers Inc.(TOL) ranks second with a 44 percent favorable outlook. “It’s one of the few homebuilding companies that I think really has been on top of things,” said Mark Levine, director of the Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver.

- Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, home to former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, are asking as much as $1,110 an hour for bankruptcy work while creditors are recovering less of their loans through company restructurings. Professionals’ fees in bankruptcy cases are growing at four times the rate of inflation, estimated Lynn LoPucki, a professor of bankruptcy law at the University of California, Los Angeles. Total fees paid for lawyers, accountants and other professionals in bankruptcies from 1998 to 2007 doubled, while the consumer price index rose about 25 percent, he said. “As the economy gets worse, the bankruptcy lawyers are charging more,” LoPucki said. “It seems that each month one sets a new record for hourly billing rates. $1,110 is, to my knowledge, a record for the debtor’s bankruptcy counsel.”

- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s call for China to loosen restrictions on its currency was criticized by economists and policy makers at the World Economic Forum. Allowing the yuan to strengthen would be “economic suicide” amid an economic slump, Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s Asia Chairman, told a panel in Davos, Switzerland, today. “I’ve never seen an economy in recession voluntarily raise their currency. It’s horrible advice.”

- The United Auto Workers union will end its so-called jobs bank for General Motors Corp.(GM) employees on Feb. 2, one of the conditions set by the government when it agreed to lend the biggest U.S. automaker $13.4 billion. GM has 1,600 workers in the program, which pays UAW members even when they have no work to do, company spokesman Tony Sapienza said today in an interview. Those leaving the jobs bank will get state unemployment benefits and some GM pay, he said.

- President Barack Obama said he is confident that the economy can be reinvigorated, starting with the passage of a stimulus package, after meeting with the chief executive officers of some of the nation’s biggest companies.

- European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet said the bank’s next important meeting is in March, suggesting it won’t cut interest rates next week. “I said that the next important rendez-vous is in March,” Trichet told Bloomberg Television in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, today. “In March we’ll have a lot of new information, we’ll have our own staff projections,” he said. “The market will not like the notion of the ECB’s wait-and- see policy,” Dustin Reid, director of currency strategy at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets in Chicago, wrote in an e-mailed note. “I suspect the euro eventually trades lower on this.”

- Robert Rubin, who quit his post as senior counselor at Citigroup Inc. this month, said an accounting rule forcing companies to mark down assets every quarter to reflect market value has “done a great deal of damage.” “I spent my whole life at Goldman Sachs believing in mark- to-market accounting, and having said that, if you look at the experience from the last two years, I think mark-to-market accounting has led to terrible vicious cycles in asset prices,” Rubin, the former U.S. Treasury secretary, said during a discussion at the 92nd St. YMCA late yesterday. Companies including Citigroup and American International Group Inc. say mark-to-market, also known as fair-value accounting, doesn’t work when few buyers are willing to trade assets like subprime mortgages.

Wall Street Journal:

- The new chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was a top lobbyist for Goldman Sachs Group(GS) Inc. until last year, and will have to recuse himself from some government duties under new White House ethics rules. Before Mr. Patterson left Goldman in April, he was vice president for government relations, and was registered to lobby Congress on legislation including energy tax credits and Indian gaming, according to disclosure forms filed with Congress.

- U.S. Federal Reserve officials on Wednesday signaled they're prepared to move forward on a controversial idea to purchase longer-dated Treasury securities, which would mark a dramatic escalation of their efforts to unclog credit markets. The Federal Open Market Committee voted 8-1 to maintain the target federal funds rate for interbank lending at a record-low range of zero to 0.25%. The interest rate and balance sheet decisions are aimed at combating a worsening recession and deflationary spiral of falling employment and spending. The Fed also held the discount rate for direct loans to commercial and investment banks unchanged at 0.5%. Rates will likely stay where they are well into the year if not into 2010, the accompanying policy statement suggested.

- On his second full day of work, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. is pulling together a comprehensive plan to stabilize the economy and that his team wants to preserve the private banking system. He declined to provide specifics on any plans to create a "bad bank" to buy up the toxic assets that have been weighing down bank balance sheets, but said details of a comprehensive plan to stabilize the financial sector should begin emerging in the near future. When asked about the possibility of nationalizing the country's banks, Mr. Geithner noted the virtues of a private banking system, saying "we'd like to do our best to preserve that system."

NY Times:

- Barely two weeks after Robert E. Rubin stepped down as senior adviser to Citigroup’s board amid the bank’s disastrous credit losses, Mr. Rubin warned against increasingly loud calls for troubled banks to be nationalized. “Nationalization as an alternative has some serious problems,” Mr. Rubin, a former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, said Tuesday night at a discussion sponsored by the 92nd Street Y in New York. “You certainly don’t want a bank’s lending practices subject to political

pressure.”

Business Week:

- Onyx(ONXX), a Sweet Deal for Bayer? The German drugmaker already has teamed up with Onyx to sell the smaller company’s drug to fight kidney cancer. Could it be the next pharma to make a move?

USA Today:

- All six of the law and accounting firms hired by the Treasury Department to help manage the $700 billion financial bailout have clients who received the federal money, contracting and regulatory records show. The firms also have been involved in structuring complicated financial instruments tied to risky assets such as sub-prime mortgages, according to their websites and Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The collapse in value of those assets is one cause of the financial crisis. One law firm, Thacher Proffitt & Wood, dissolved five days after Treasury announced its contract because its work arranging complex transactions had dried up. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, which took over the contract from Thacher Proffitt, also has clients that received bailout funds, its website shows.

San Francisco Chronicle:

- The nation's top military officer said Tuesday the United States did all it could to intercept a suspected arms shipment to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, but its hands were tied. Separately, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other U.S. officials said it is too soon to tell whether the prospect of new U.S. engagement with Iran will bear fruit. Mullen confirmed that a Cypriot-flagged ship intercepted in the Red Sea last week was carrying Iranian arms and that U.S. authorities suspect that the shipment was ultimately bound for the Gaza Strip, where Hamas and Israel are observing a shaky truce after three weeks of fighting. "The United States did as much as we could do legally," Mullen said, adding that he would like more authority to act in such cases. "We were not authorized to seize the weapons or do anything like that."

Washington Post:

- Iraq will send Syria its first ambassador since around the time Saddam Hussein became president in 1979, a government official said Wednesday. Alaa al-Jawadi would leave Wednesday to become Iraq's new envoy in Damascus, Mohammed al-Haj Hamoud, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, told Reuters. Last October Damascus posted its first ambassador to Iraq since Saddam's takeover in Iraq strained ties with Syria, which for decades has been governed by a rival branch of the pan-Arab Baath party.

AdWeek:

- CBS sees an opportunity in the continuous stream of disastrous economic news. In March the company plans to roll out MoneyWatch.com, a personal finance site conceived specifically with the ongoing financial meltdown in mind.

Financial Times:
- Gulf banks may have avoided most of the toxic assets polluting the global financial system but many are overexposed to a sector that rating agencies and analysts say may prove to be nearly as poisonous – property. After years of growth, Dubai’s real estate market is particularly exposed to the withdrawal of credit. Residential prices have dropped 23 per cent from their peak last September according to research by HSBC, the bank, and some experts are talking about a 50 per cent drop in property prices from top to bottom.

Financial Times Deutschland:
- Germany’s Christian Democratic Party is calling for a sale of the Bundesbank’s gold reserves to help weather the economic crisis. Steffen Kampeter, the CDU budget spokesman, wants the government to use the country’s gold and currency reserves to finance an economic rescue package.

Der Platow Brief:

- Deutsche Bank AG’s operating business may have had a “sensational” first three weeks of 2009. There is speculation the German bank may earn almost $1.3 billion in pretax profit in January, the newsletter said.

Die Zeit:

- Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF, said without more political coordination on economic policies the euro region is “in danger,” citing an interview.

The National:

- Property prices have fallen in Abu Dhabi by an average of 15 per cent in recent months, but a lack of finance is stalling the market, according to industry experts. Prices in the secondary property market have softened after peaking last summer, with big falls occurring at Al Raha Beach and Al Reem Island, according to LLJ Property, a property broker based in the capital.

Bear Radar

Style Underperformer:
Large-cap Value (+1.35%)

Sector Underperformers:
Gold (-1.36%), Drugs (-.23%) and Education (-.22%)

Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:
SFG, DV, NVS, NEM, WBSN, AMLN, BDX, LM and PLT

Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:
1) MT 2) CENX 3) CX 4) GERN 5) RCL

Bull Radar

Style Outperformer:
Mid-cap Value (+3.70%)

Sector Outperformers:
Banks (+11.87%), Homebuilders (+8.43%) and Disk Drives (+8.09%)

Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:
STT, WTFC, WFC, DB, PRU, PFG, PBR, PHG, ABB, SU, COCO, VPRT, ZION, TRMK, GPRO, WRLD, CATY, SPWRB, CHRW, PVTB, PRSP, FMBI, BEAT, STAR, YHOO, GMCR, SY, RGS, TOD, RHB, KIE, BBL, RKT and TDW

Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:
1) RHT 2) AMT 3) WLP 4) ITW 5) DISH

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Wednesday Watch

Late-Night Headlines
Bloomberg:

- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. may manage the so-called bad bank that the Obama administration is likely to set up as it tries to break the back of the credit crisis, two people familiar with the matter said. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair is pushing to run the operation, which would buy the toxic assets clogging banks’ balance sheets, one of the people said. Bair is arguing that her agency has expertise and could help finance the effort by issuing bonds guaranteed by the FDIC, a second person said. President Barack Obama’s team may announce the outlines of its financial-rescue plan as early as next week, an administration official said.

- OPEC wants U.S. regulators to curtail oil trading by hedge funds and speculators who helped make last year the most volatile in crude oil trading. Abdalla el-Badri, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is seeking rules to “limit the level of speculation” by investors who buy oil without planning to use it. Oil surged 46 percent in the first half of 2008 to a record $147.27 only to plunge by the end of the year, prompting OPEC to make its biggest ever supply cuts. “The move above $90 a barrel was driven by financial flows rather than fundamentals” of supply and demand, said Edward Morse, chief economist at Louis Capital Markets in New York. Selling by speculators “helped propel the commodities price downturn, but fundamentals have weighed heavily as well.” President Barack Obama has yet to comment on the need to rein in commodity traders. Interest from speculators has rebounded, with the number of barrels owned by active speculators, index funds and other investors only 13 percent lower than when it was when oil prices peaked in July, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Jeffrey Currie in London said in a report yesterday. World consumption will fall for a second year in 2009, the first back-to-back contraction in 25 years, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

- The cost of protecting corporate bonds from default fell in Australia after Rio Tinto Group said it may sell shares to cut debt. Japan’s benchmark of credit- default swaps was unchanged in Tokyo.

- General Electric Co.(GE) and its finance arm may lose their top-level Aaa ratings as the global recession and credit crisis lessen the chance GE Capital can make a $5 billion profit goal this year, Moody’s Investors Service said. The potential downgrade affects long-term debt that isn’t insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Moody’s analysts said in a statement today. The Markit iTraxx Australia index declined 5 basis points to 320 as of 11:45 a.m. in Sydney, ABN Amro Holding NV data show. The Markit iTraxx Japan index was unchanged at 325 basis points, Barclays Capital prices show.

- The U.S. House approved a measure to make it easier for U.S. workers to win pay-discrimination lawsuits, sending the legislation to President Barack Obama for his signature. The legislation would let employees sue on a claim they are being underpaid because of discrimination that occurred years earlier. The House vote was 250-177. The Senate passed the bill last week.

- Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he will “do everything in my power” to pass climate-protection legislation this year. Former Vice President Al Gore is scheduled to testify to Kerry’s panel tomorrow on the environmental threat from greenhouse-gas emissions.

- When Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin were invited to speak to the World Economic Forum, China and Russia were supposed to be saviors of the global economy as the U.S. fell into recession. No more. Today, as the Chinese premier and Russian prime minister address the opening of the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, they’re disappointing those who bet their economies would help power the world through the slump and weakening their case for a greater say among global leaders. “The Chinese and Russians are no longer as cocky as they were about six months ago,” said Huang Jing, a political science professor at Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “They became prosperous because they were integrated into the international economic system, and now they realize there’s a price they have to pay.”

- Australian consumer prices declined by the most in 11 years last quarter, increasing scope for the central bank to cut interest rates as evidence mounts the economy is heading for its first recession since 1991.

Wall Street Journal:

- The U.S. economic stimulus package neared $900 billion in the Senate, as President Barack Obama wooed Republicans ahead of an expected House vote Wednesday. The rare trip by a president to Capitol Hill revealed the urgency in Congress and the White House over a cure for the souring economy. The day was marked by Democratic deal-making to win support from skeptical Republicans. The Obama administration indicated it would agree to a $69 billion Senate proposal to shield tens of millions of middle-income Americans from the so-called alternative minimum tax, a priority of Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. White House officials also spread the word that Mr. Obama was willing to drop a proposed expansion of contraceptive coverage under Medicaid that has become a symbol for Republican critics.

- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar indicated Tuesday that the Obama administration could be open to expanded offshore drilling and is considering doing away with a controversial program that allows oil companies to pay in kind for oil and natural gas taken from public lands. Environmental groups want the Obama administration to re-impose a ban on expanded offshore drilling that President George W. Bush lifted last year. The Bush administration plan would open tracts off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts where drilling had been prohibited.

- A measure to allow judges to reduce the principal amounts of mortgages for troubled borrowers in bankruptcy cleared a key hurdle Tuesday when it was approved by a U.S. House panel. The legislation, which is progressing quickly in Congress, would amount to the most aggressive step yet by the federal government to help strapped borrowers avoid foreclosure.

- While embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich continued his whirlwind media tour in New York on Tuesday, state senators in his impeachment trial listened to a few of the conversations intercepted by federal agents that were used to bring conspiracy charges against him. Proponents contend it will act like a stick, spurring mortgage servicers to complete more loan modifications. Meanwhile, the banking industry warns that it will raise mortgage costs for all borrowers.

- The fence along the U.S.-Mexico border is mostly finished. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Lloyd Easterling says that 601 miles of the project had been completed as of a week ago. Mr. Easterling said 69 miles of the fence still must be built to meet the goal set during the Bush administration. In December, then President-elect Barack Obama said he wanted to evaluate border security operations before he considers whether to finish building the fence under his administration. Mr. Easterling said the Obama White House has not told Homeland Security to stop building the fence.

NY Times:

- As the commercial real estate market limps along in the midst of a global recession, some investors say they believe that at least one sector — medical office buildings — might serve as a crutch, as it has in past economic downturns.

- The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget. The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education, including school renovation, special education, Head Start and grants to needy college students, would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II. Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.

BusinessWeek:

- Like oil? Need oil? If so, Jose S. Gabrielli de Azevedo, the president and CEO of Brazil's state-controlled oil company, Petrobras (PBR), may be your next melhor amigo (best friend). At a time when other big oil companies are barely managing to keep their production from declining, Petrobras on Jan. 23 announced an ambitious $174 billion plan to develop new oil and natural gas fields, mostly in deep waters off Brazil's coast. This investment—undertaken in spite of a global economic downturn that makes it hard to raise money—will help offset the shortfall in production from other oil fields around the world and restrain the likely increase in oil prices after the recession ends.

- Barack Obama made sophisticated use of technology during his run for the White House. And throughout his campaign, the BlackBerry (RIMM)-addicted candidate stressed the transformative power of technology, making a high-profile promise to provide high-speed Internet access to all Americans. But when the House unveiled a preliminary version of the economic stimulus plan, crafted with some input from President Obama's advisers, the amount of money allocated for broadband Internet development was much lower than experts had anticipated. In the $825 billion proposal, only $6 billion was aimed at broadband, far short of the $12 billion to $30 billion that industry experts estimate it would cost to wire the nation. The House bill allocated the same amount of money to weatherizing the homes of low- and moderate-income people.

CNNMoney.com:
- Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit downplayed the notion that his bank, or any other major financial institution for that matter, would be taken over the by the U.S. government.

Forbes:

- Mobile TV Turns On.

IBD:

- Athenahealth (ATHN), the company Jonathan Bush co-founded in 1997 and currently leads, offers technology and services to help doctors manage billing and medical records. President Obama has emphasized this kind of medical IT to help save money in health care while expanding coverage.

Philly.com:

- Joseph S. Forte, who in September told investors he had grown their money to $154 million, but now stands accused of running a Ponzi scheme, appeared alone in federal court today because he has no money for a lawyer. "I'm trying to raise the money," Forte told Magistrate Judge Faith Angell. She granted him a one-week continuance, pushing the preliminary hearing back to Monday.

AP:

- Former President Bill Clinton earned nearly $6 million in speaking fees last year, almost all of it from foreign companies, according to financial documents filed by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that $4.6 million of the former president's reported $5.7 million in 2008 honoraria came from foreign sources, including Kuwait's national bank, other firms and groups in Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico and Portugal and a Hong Kong-based company that spent $100,000 on federal lobbying last year.

Financial Times:
- Capital flows to emerging markets are in danger of collapsing this year as the financial crisis in advanced economies risks choking off the supply of credit to the developing world, an association of large banks warned on Tuesday. The IIF estimates emerging market institutions will need to refinance about $20bn a month in the first half of 2009, but that the current supply of credit covers only half that.

TimesOnline:
- Hedge fund four helpfully stick their heads in the noose.

Late Buy/Sell Recommendations
Citigroup:
- Reiterated Buy on (ENR), target $85.

- Reiterated Buy on (CHRW), target $60.

- Reiterated Buy on (FORM), target $24.

- Reiterated Buy on (HSY), target $42.

- Reiterated Buy on (VZ), target $35.

- Reiterated Buy on (JAVA), target $6.70.

Night Trading
Asian Indices are -.25% to +1.75% on average.
S&P 500 futures +2.01%.
NASDAQ 100 futures +1.81%.

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Earnings of Note
Company/EPS Estimate
- (TDW)/1.92

- (PX)/.96

- (BHI)/1.26

- (WLP)/1.36

- (LM)/-.4.00

- (SO)/.25

- (BA)/.77

- (T)/.65

- (WFC)/.33

- (COP)/1.24

- (CVD)/.70

- (RHI)/.25

- (QCOM)/.47

- (ARG)/.75

- (ALL)/1.35

- (SYMC)/.32

- (RYL)/-1.18

- (SBUX)/.17

- (WDC)/.31

- (BSX)/.13

- (OI)/.39

- (DNB)/1.82

- (BXP)/1.35

- (CTXS)/.47

- (SY)/.61

- (HES)/.37

- (BDX)/1.15

- (SWK)/.59

- (MUR)/.79

- (GD)/1.59

- (PCU)/.21

- (LRCX)/-.04

- (AMG)/1.20

Economic Releases

10:30 am EST

- Bloomberg consensus estimates call for a weekly crude oil inventory build of +2,800,000 barrels versus a +6,100,000 barrel increase the prior week. Gasoline supplies are estimated to rise by +1,750,000 barrels versus a +6,475,000 barrel increase the prior week. Distillate inventories are expected to fall by -1,125,000 barrels versus a +790,000 barrel increase the prior week. Finally, Refinery Utilization is estimated to fall by -.50% versus a -1.98% decline the prior week.

2:15 pm EST

- The FOMC is expected to leave the benchmark fed funds rate at .25%.

Upcoming Splits
- None of note

Other Potential Market Movers
- The weekly MBA mortgage applications report, Citi Financial Services Conference, World Economic Forum and (SQNM) analyst day could also impact trading today.

BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly higher, boosted by financial and technology stocks in the region. I expect US equities to open modestly higher and to rally into the afternoon, finishing higher. The Portfolio is 100% net long heading into the day.

Stocks Finish Higher, Boosted by Rail, Insurance, HMO, Bank, Semi and Steel Shares

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