FOMC Minutes Ahead

Good morning. Premarket futures are pointing to a positive start as investors look forward to the release of the FOMC minutes at 2:PM. Following Friday's better than expected jobs report, expectations for future rate cuts have significantly diminished and there's hope that the minutes will revive expectations for more interest rate cuts.

Along with strength in overseas markets and weakness in commodities, we have the start to earnings season with a report from Alcoa Inc (AA) after the close.

Premarket gainers: STV, HOKU, VCLK, YTEC, BRLC, MOS, JAKK, XING, CNIC, ACUS, YUM, GOOG, TNH, CHNR, RIO, VDSI, WGP, FXI, BRLC, CSUN, EXM, SIMG, UVE, AVNR, and JRJC.

Premarket losers: NASI, PLCE, MCHP, CTRP, JBLU, GOLD, FFIV, and PDLI.

Earnings and interest rates, and in that particular order, will become the key focus over the next few weeks. There's lots of chatter this morning that there is quite a bit of disparity among analyst expectations for this coming earnings season but we know that the trend has been for earnings to come in well above expectations. The market is counting on that to happen again, but at least so far this week they don't seem willing to make aggressive moves ahead of those reports. A friendly Fed may help this afternoon, but what we need to see more than anything is double-digit earnings growth.

I'd like to make a few small trades ahead of the FOMC minutes, but nothing too aggressive. At this point, I'm not sure I'll find anything, but I'm looking and waiting to see how we open. Have a great morning!