Pre-market News And Views
The S&P 500 Index futures(ES-M1) are trading higher by 3.00 points to 1308.25 per contract. The move higher in the futures comes as gross domestic product(GDP) in the United States for the fourth quarter was reported at 3.1 percent beating analyst expectations of an earlier estimate of 2.8 percent. In any case, this is a Friday and rarely do the markets sell off on Friday's before the weekend. In the past two years there have been less than a dozen 100 point sell offs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday's before the weekend. Remember, if the Federal Reserve is going to have its QE-2 program work for a while the U.S. consumer must start to spend more money. Consumer spending accounts for 70.0 percent of the GDP in the United States.
The European Union is still a mess, however, problems continue to get swept under the rug despite Ireland, Greece, and Portugal still having huge debt problems. Yesterday, the rating agency Moody's downgraded thirty Spanish banks and the Euro currency rallied higher. This is a perfect reason why traders must trade what they see and not what they think.
Last night the Asian market rallied higher across the board. The Nikkei Index(Japan) traded higher by 1.06 percent despite increased nuclear radiation being released from damaged nuclear reactors. At this time the markets are euphoric regardless of how bad the news is. The highly followed Shanghai Index(China) traded higher by 1.06 percent and this could help the leading commodity stocks at the start of the trading day in the United States.
WTI oil is trading slightly lower this morning by 0.25 to $105.35 a barrel. The Middle East and North Africa remain in turmoil. Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, and now Syria are all nations in focus and must be followed closely. If there are any problems in Saudi Arabia then oil could see a sharp spike higher. Gold and silver are basically flat this morning after selling off sharply yesterday afternoon.
Oracle Corp.(NASDAQ: ORCL) is rallying higher before the opening bell after reporting earnings. Research In Motion Ltd.(NASDAQ: RIMM) is in downward motion after reporting earnings. Therefore, technology stocks could see some action in the first couple hours of the session. Usually, the action on Friday's will get very quiet after the first couple of hours of trading.
Nicholas Santiago InTheMoneyStocks.com
