A Little Inflation

Good morning. Premarket futures are pointing to a weak start following a higher than expected read on inflation through the PPI. Given the rise in commodities, this is no big surprise.

We also have soaring home foreclosures and some disappointing news from a few companies like Home Depot (HD) among others who confirmed that consumers are scaling back. Meanwhile, equity markets around the globe are trading mostly higher.

Premarket gainers: CGPI, CNTF, SNDA, PRAN, ANTP, SHFL, CBRL, COIN, SWIR, EMC, THC, MICC, CISG, MTCT, ERIC, CBRL, JWN, and YTEC.

Premarket losers: HWAY, SSYS, CRDN, FWLT, SIRI, HD, GOOG, BIDU, KWK, LDK, TYPE, USU, and DISH.

At 10:AM we have a report on consumer confidence which is expected to fall to 82.0. We also have more Fedspeak from Donald Kohn at noon.

We have two trends in competition this morning - 1) sell strength and buy weakness and 2) buy ahead of Bernanke. Given the last couple of days of strength, I'm more inclined to think the that we'll see some profits taken though the market seems to be looking for any reason or no reason to rally.

Have a terrific Tuesday!