Morning Breath June 13

The Asian/Pacific markets closed with an up bias. New Zealand dropped 1.3%; China rallied 1.3%. Europe is currently mixed. Greece is up 1.4%, Norway and Stockholm are down more than 1%. Futures here in the States point towards a down open for the cash market. This could change when PPI data and retail numbers are released at 8:30 est.
The dollar is down slightly. Oil is down, copper up. Gold is flat, silver down.
Jamie Dimon will be on Capital Hill speaing with the Senate Banking Committee about JPM’s multi-billion dollar loss. He’ll no doubt try to convince the committee banks can be trusted, that they don’t need any oversight or regulation.
DELL is paying a dividend for the first time in company history.
MO announced an $18 billion stock buy back that will take place over 3 years.
CELG is buying back $2.5 billion in stock.
Borrowing costs in Italy (bond yields) have reached a 6-month high.
German yields are low overall but have surged the last two days.
Greeks go to the polls on Sunday which could set in motion Greece’s exit from the euro zone. I mention this mostly so you can gauge the odds the market makes a forceful one-way move into the weekend. Unless there’s reliable survey data, the market is more likely to be choppy than trendy.
Solar stocks were up big yesterday. Today there’s a report solar installations in Q1 jumped 85% relative to Q1 of 2011. But most of the growth came from projects that began prior to Dec 31, 2011 when federal tax credit program expired.www.leavittbrothers.com