U.S. Equity markets are higher with the DJIA and S&P front-month futures gaining 0.25% and NASDAQ futures higher by 0.5%. Earnings reports continue to be solid. Last night, YUM Brands! (YUM), VMWare (VMW), eBay (EBAY), American Express (AXP), F5 Networks (FFIV), Marriott (MAR), and Qualcomm (QCOM) were among the companies that reported to beat earnings expectations. As a result, VMW’s price target was upgraded this morning at three houses, and FFIV’s rating was upgraded at two houses. VMW is up 2.4%, while FFIV gained 7% in premarket trade.
Crude Oil futures are flat after sharp declines yesterday. An interesting piece in the WSJ notes that while Gasoline futures have come down 6.3%, prices at the pump have only dropped 0.5%. But, the WSJ says, some traders are putting a top on Gasoline futures … I’d wait until CNBC confirms the top before we are definitely in for another rally.
Not much going on in currency markets. EUR/USD is pressured, down almost 100-pips from its session highs. But, the pair is trading in the very familiar 1.3075-1.31 area. We continue to monitor the currency for a breakout of the Ichimoku Cloud on the daily chart. That would mean prices would have to close below 1.3055 or above 1.32 before it indicates a sell or buy, respectively.
As for data, weekly jobless claims were released at 8:30 a.m. ET, showing a seasonally adjusted 386,000 people filed to receive initial unemployment benefits last week. There is a lot of talk about the seasonality factors that are happening with the Labor Department’s data, so the fact that this is higher-than-expected is unlikely to weigh markets down. At 10:30 a.m. ET, traders will look at the weekly Natural Gas inventory data for some volatility there. Hint: Don’t buy Natural Gas. Futures are down another 0.6% today, marking another 2.1% decline this week.