Market Alert - Pre-Market

Futures vs FV: SP -2.33; DJ +19.59; NASDAQ -5.32

Futures were flattish heading into the morning's data and anticipating Yellen day two and contemplating the Flynn resignation and what it means for the Trump agenda. There are wild stories on both sides, one of interest being the CIA and NSA joined forces to oust Flynn as payback (or more) for Trump's stand on the intelligence community as evidenced by appointing Flynn, a known antagonist to what he called 'bloated' US intelligence agencies.

Futures are down a bit after the morning data.

Empire Manufacturing: 18.7 vs 7.0 exp vs 6.5. Highest since 9/2014.

CPI: 0.6% vs 0.3% prior. 2.5% year/year

Core CPI: 0.3% vs 0.2% prior. 2.3% year/year. 15 months of 2+%. Ties May 2012, 9/2008 was the last time core was higher year/year.

Retail Sales, Jan: 0.4% vs 0.1% ex vs 1.0% Dec (from 0.6%)
Ext autos: 0.8%
Ex-autos and gas: 0.7%
Clearly autos were lower, a drag on otherwise decent consumption.

Industrial Production, Jan: -0.3% vs 0.0% exp vs 0.6% Dec

Capacity Utilization: 75.3 vs 75.5 exp vs 75.6 Dec

Earnings beats: PEP; HLT

Misses: AIG (BL); ESRX (TL); FOSL (TL)

Trump: Meeting with retailers about a border tax.


OTHER MARKETS
Bonds: 2.515% vs 2.473%. Bonds continue selling, yields rising

EUR/USD: 1.0533 VS 1.0572

USD/JPY: 114.879 vs 114.356

Oil: 53.02, -0.18

Gold: 1222.40, -3.00


Futures are mixed with the banks helping DJ30 to positive while all other areas are somewhat off to start midweek. Lots of talk about how the rally just continues even in the face of some skeptics, but those are skeptics come lately and they are not really taking away from the bullishness that is shown in Baron's covers, etc. Nonetheless, the sellers remain in hibernation, having seen their shadow three weeks ago when their attempt to sell the gaps to new highs were bought and subsequent new highs were hit. Was that an indication of another 6 weeks of a rally?

So, we look and see how the chips, China, metals perform after many leaders took a day off Tuesday, more in some other cases. Upside still looks in control because the sellers are still absent.

Jon Johnson, Chief Market Strategist
InvestmentHouse.com
______________________________________
Alert Key
http://www.investmenthouse.com/alertkey.htm

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. USE THE CONTACT US PAGE ON OUR WEBSITE.

Customer Support: http://investmenthouse.com/contact_us.php