The Earnings Question

Good morning. Premarket futures are up indicating some buy interest at the open.

Along with expectations of another rate cut, falling oil prices and a modest rebound in overseas markets are helping lift sentiment even though we have a batch of pre-earnings downgrades. Other than some comments from Atlanta Fed President Lockhart there is little in the way of corporate or economic news expected today.

Premarket gainers: SEED, FEED, CNET, MRVC, BLTI, FSLR, MXWL, NEOC, PCBK, BG, HYTM, SPWR, HOC, NTRI, JRJC, ASTI, AKNS, JASO, MICC, CELG, HOKU, SMSI, SIGM, DSTI, OSIR, SOLF, CSIQ, ESLR, and TASR.

Premarket losers: SCRX, SCHN, UAUA, JEF, ZUMZ, ETFC, QBAK, and DELL.

After today, it should be a fairly busy week with the New Hampshire primaries and several reports on home, retail, and trade sales. We also have a speech by Bernanke on Thursday and the start of earnings season.

Technically, all eyes will be watching the 1375 to 1400 on the S&P 500 which represents a potential level of support. Unfortunately, we're still not oversold enough and have not reached extreme levels of fear based on many sentiment indicators I follow. Perhaps that will come later in the week, but for now we have to take it one day at a time. Trying to outsmart this tape is a recipe for disaster until we have at least some idea on how the market will react to upcoming earnings.

Let's make it a good and productive week!