The Markets Are Open

Good morning. Happy Thursday.

The Asian/Pacific markets closed with a bearish slant. Indonesia dropped 2.2% and Japan lost 1%. Europe is trading with an upward bias. Greece is up 3.8%, but Austria is down 1.5%. Futures here in the States point towards positive open for the cash market.
The dollar is down slightly. Oil is flat, copper is down slightly. Gold and silver are flat-to-down.
The market moved up nicely on Tuesday and closed close to a 2-week high. Then it gave everything back yesterday. The near term remains very unclear. Good news or no news from Europe sends prices up; bad news sends prices down. The intermediate term trend is down; the short term can go either way. This is not a time to take big chances. Conserve captial. Things need to be sorted out before you place big bets. This doesn’t mean you have to stop trading, it just means the near term can go either way, so you don’t want to be overly biased and you don’t want to be overly exposed to one side.
For what it’s worth, today is the day of May. Oil has suffered its worst monthly drop in three years…gold its worst in 13 years.
Graff Diamonds has pulled its IPO in Hong Kong – the third to be pulled this month.
Here in the States, Kayak is either pulling its IPO or delaying it. The company didn’t start their road show as previously planned.
Tomorrow we get the latest employment data.
From a technical standpoint, other than some oversold breadth indicators, there isn’t much for the bulls to cling to. The market needs some sort of resolution in Europe or the hostage situation that currently exists will continue to drag prices down.www.leavittbrothers.com