Searching For Positive Catalysts

Good morning. Premarket futures have a slight negative bias this morning.

To start out the new week, investors are looking through Lehman Brothers' (LEH) second quarter results, reacting to a leadership change at AIG, and a downgrade of GE. In addition, oil is still up despite chatter that Saudi Arabia will boost production by 500,000 barrels a day and the first economic datapoint this week - Empire State Manufacturing Survey - came in weaker than expected.

Premarket gainers: ASMI, NVGN, TITN, XMSR, ALKS, SIRI, BCS, RAME, TEVA, YRCW, CF, AGU, AW, CPST, SPWR, NXY, ZMH, ABX, GOLD, SRVY, CY, AIG, PQ, GME, & LEH.

Premarket losers: ACAD, CDS, QGEN, DSCO, GE, TXT, FITB, ITW, & YHOO.

After the open, Bernanke will speak about health care reform at 10:AM and Jeffrey Lacker will talk about the economic outlook at 1:PM. In addition, the housing market index from the National Association of Home Builders will be released at 1:PM.

We saw an oversold bounce at the end of last week, but traders will need to have some positive catalysts (i.e. better economic data & lower oil prices) to work with for that oversold bounce to be sustained. Let's make it a great week!