Market Alert - Pre-Market

Futures vs FV: SP -5.52; DJ -4.46; NASDAQ -10.50

Quiet on the economic news front as the headlines are dominated by the court fight on the Trump immigration order, Trump's comments last night that the ACA repeal may take into 2018. Football is also playing a role but more in the background. I am reminded of an old SNL skit back in the 1970's during the Carter term when Dallas and Pittsburgh played a great Super bowl. Carter was giving the State of the Union address and cited 'the best Super Bowl ever' as a signal the state of the union was fine.

Earnings are pretty much the market centric story, and there are not many stories there today.

Beat: TSN, HAS. HAS is jumping given MAT's issues earlier in the year.

Miss: NWL (Rubbermaid products, TL miss)

Immigration Order: Appeals court does not overturn the lower court's reversal; no surprise given it is a rather liberal circuit.

More interesting, 97 tech companies have filed briefs against the order, notably AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, TWTR, NFLX -- some of the biggest H-1b proponents. I said they were very worried about their cheap labor supply as they prefer cheap foreign labor to the US-educated citizens who, despite the tech giants' claims, have those STEM degrees they say they seek.

Europe: The underdog candidates are coming from behind in France and Germany. Another reason gold and bonds are again stronger.

Bill Gross: Without ECB and BOJ QE, US would "sink into recession." Another economic vote of confidence . . .


OTHER MARKETS:
Bonds: 2.422% vs 2.48%. Market under pressure, some turmoil in the political arena, bonds rally some.

Oil: 53.68, -0.15

Gold: 120.30, +9.5. As with bonds, a bit of turmoil in the world and gold continues its rally off the lows from late 2016.

Futures are recovering some lost ground as the bell approaches. Still lower but cutting some losses. After a pretty good finish to last week with the Friday break higher (after a volatile, pretty good week), stocks are a bit soft, digesting the weekend events, tweets, etc. Overall the market bias remains upside, but there are headwinds discussed at length (too much length some would say) in recent reports. We just have to see if good stocks hold trends and make good moves.

Jon Johnson, Chief Market Strategist
InvestmentHouse.com
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