strongMonday:br //strongEconomic NAbr /Earnings H amp; R Block (HRB), Nat Semi (NSM), Pep Boys (PBY)br /br /strongTuesday:/strongbr /Economic Pending Home Sales (-2.3%)br /Earnings Analogic (ALOG), AutoZone (AZO), Kroger (KR), Toro (TTC), ADC Telecom (ADCT), Cooper (COO), Oxford (OXM), Pall (PLL), SAIC (SAI)br /br /strongWednesday:/strongbr /Economic Weekly Crude, Treasury Budget (-$193B)br /Earnings Korn/Ferry (KFY), CKE Restaurants (CKR), Greif (GEF), NCI Bldg (NCS)br /br /strongThursday:br //strongEconomic Weekly Claims, Import / Export, Trade Balance (-$54B)br /Earnings Ciena (CIEN), Costco (COST), Luluemon (LULU), Esterline (ESL), Martek (MATK), Teekay (TK)br /br /strongFriday:/strongbr /Economic PPI amp; Core (-1.8%, 0.2%), Retail Sales (-1.4%, -1.7%), Biz’ Invs (-0.1%), Michigan (58) Earnings NAdiv class="blogger-post-footer"http://stockweb.blogspot.com/atom.xml/div pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/SQk3ONGLysXPUUj8p5cpWPND6oI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/SQk3ONGLysXPUUj8p5cpWPND6oI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Stockweb?a=IveUgyz9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Stockweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

Dow futures are way, way down this morning as the US financial sector careens toward a ditch. On the other hand, gold started the morning up $14, but it's only up $5 as I write this as the US dollar rallies. We'll sit the morning out -- I may have trading recommendations for my services later.

Source: Chart of the Day/Bloomberg

“Despite all the rhetoric, with the rally in the dollar index, OPEC is still saying `thank you very much,''' Olivier Jakob, managing director of Petromatrix Gmbh in Zug, Switzerland, said. “For OPEC, $80 now is the same as $100 two months ago.''

Loss of Merrill, Lehman Signals `Tectonic' Shift in Wall Street Landscape In the biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression, two of Wall Street's most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., headed toward extinction.

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Stocks are getting smashed again this morning. After reviewing my recent trades, I am comfortable that I executed properly and according to my system. However, I do have one regret. The one theme I have believed in most (lower equities) has been working, and without me on board! Asset deflation across the board is a trade we need to consider at every opportunity. That said, I am not fond of chasing markets lower for entry on the short side. If I get a signal to short stocks in the next day or two, I will take a half-size position, combined with a much larger stop (twice my regular), so as to keep total portfolio risk at 1%.

Let’s keep an eye on the Japanese yen. If might be setting up for a long side trade in the near future, and serves as a synthetic short of US …

Earnings started positively this week after the biggest mining group BHP Billiton posted today record earnings and increased dividend. Another interesting earnings this week I will be watching are Hewlett Packard and Home Depot.Monday:Economic NAEarnings BHP Billiton (BHP), Lowe’s (LOW), Trina Solar (TSL)Tuesday:Economic Housing Starts & Bldg P’s (963K, 949K), PPI & Core (0.6%, 0.2%)Earnings Home Depot (HD), Medtronic (MDT), ReneSola (SOL), Saks (SKS), Target (TGT), Analog Devices (ADI), Hewlett (HPQ), Open Text (OTEX), DryShips (DRYS)Wednesday:Economic Weekly CrudeEarnings BJ’s (BJ), Ross Stores (ROST), Suntech (STP), Citi Trends (CTRN), Gymboree (GYMB), Limited (LTD), JD Uniphase (JDSU), Salesforce (CRM)Thursday:Economic Weekly Claims, Leading Indicators (-0.2%), Philly Fed (-14.1)Earnings Barnes & Noble (BKS), Burger King (BKC), Children’s Place (PLCE), Dick’s Sport (DKS), Gamestop (GME), Heinz (HNZ), Hormel (HRL), Patterson (PDCO), Toro (TTC), Aeropostale (ARO), Blue Coat (BCSI), Intuit ...