It's another wait and see kind of day as we hang out at the top of my trading range.
I want to give a shout out to my man Putin, who won a sweeping political victory over the weekend, locking up the Parliament (no, not literally!) with Putin's United Russia party beating the Communist Party 64.1% to 11.6%, I mention this as you will be hearing from Fox and Clueless Narrators Bashing Comrades that this is somehow a bad thing so I guess we should infer that either they would have preferred that the Communist Party was reelected or they are such complete morons that they don't even know who Putin's opponent was!
From a market perspective, like him or not, Putin has stabilized Russia and stability is a good thing in a global economy (remember Detente? Ah, good times!). Hugo Chavez did not fare as well as his bid to change the constitution to allow him to expand his powers and stay on as President were "narrowly" defeated (meaning defeated by such a wide margin that even cheating wouldn't help). Mr. Chavez has publicly stated that a "no" vote on the referendum "was tantamount to treason" so there's a whole lot of arrests to be made this week in Caracas. Venezuela is a situation that literally can not get much worse so who really cares at this point? Chavez has made the very grave mistake of alienating so many people that no one has anything to lose by pissing him off.
I'm behind today after doing an extensive November review so I will simply say Asia mixed but looking bad, blah blah bird flu, blah blah China Rail up 69% in IPO and Yuan bonds may be a reality soon, which we need to keep an eye on as this could destabilize the dollar.
Over in Europe it's flattish ahead of our open but Vivendi is buying out ATVI and already they've got Shatner doing Warcraft commercials! Any PCLN investor can tell you that Shatner is marketing gold! That's reason enough for me to finally buy TTWO as analysts will be rethinking the value of a big game title and upgrading soon. The Mar $17.50s at $1.50 should give us a good look at holiday sales. My favorite game company nobody talks about is THQI and they should be flying as they are very undervalued anyway. It will be too late to pick up close calls so it will be the Jan '09 $30s at $3 (guessing) and we'll sell the Jan $26.62s when the momentum slows. There's lots of M&A activity in Europe today as they are rushing to spend those Euros before they correct.
Thankfully there's not much going on in the US markets this morning so I'll catch up by looking at the upcoming data and simply stating that I don't want the market to go higher yet, we need more consolidation and you don't take a 14,000 cake out of the oven until it's ready or you just get a sticky, gooey mess so let's embrace the consolidation while it lasts:
| Date | ET | Release | For | Expectation/Notations | Consensus | Prior |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 03 | 10:00 | ISM Index | Nov | It better be up or we're Japan! | 50.5 | 50.9 |
| Dec 03 | 17:00 | Auto Sales | Nov | Discounts make even good #s bad | 5.2M | 5.1M |
| Dec 03 | 17:00 | Truck Sales | Nov | Who can afford to drive these things? | 7.1M | 7.1M |
| Dec 05 | 08:30 | Productivity-Rev. | Q3 | Hopefully a bright spot. | 5.5% | 4.9% |
| Dec 05 | 10:00 | Factory Orders | Oct | Expect lower | 0.4% | 0.2% |
| Dec 05 | 10:00 | ISM Services | Nov | Don't expect much on holidays | 55.0 | 55.8 |
| Dec 05 | 10:30 | Crude Inventories | 11/30 | They closed the ship channels! | NA | -452K |
| Dec 06 | 08:30 | Initial Claims | 12/01 | Hitting 2 year-highs | NA | 352K |
| Dec 07 | 08:30 | Nonfarm Payrolls | Nov | Hitting 2-year lows | 75K | 166K |
| Dec 07 | 08:30 | Unemployment Rate | Nov | Hitting 2-year highs | 4.8% | 4.7% |
| Dec 07 | 08:30 | Hourly Earnings | Nov | These can be very inflationary | 0.3% | 0.2% |
| Dec 07 | 08:30 | Average Workweek | Nov | This will be closer to 34 | 33.8 | 33.8 |
| Dec 07 | 10:00 | Mich Sentiment-Prel. | Dec | Gas coming down should help | 75.5 | 76.1 |
| Dec 07 | 15:00 | Consumer Credit | Oct | MA says through the roof! | $5.0B | $3.7B |
OK, so let's watch for our expected dip but if we do end up holding 13,300 we may have to rethink our channel but we're pretty well balanced and really just playing to burn off our caller's premiums at this point so let's hope that works while we go with the flow and ride the waves as they come.
