Earnings, Data, & Warren Buffett

Good morning. Premarket futures are lower as the market sorts through the latest earnings reports from Google among others, another large drop in housing starts and building permits for September, and merger discussions between General Motors and Chrysler.

On the credit market front, Libor fell to its lowest level in four years while the Fed makes a strong push to set up a clearinghouse for those infamous credit default swaps.

Premarket gainers: AMD, GOOG, GILD, CEGE, CMCSA, CIT, SKS, IAG, BX, NDAQ, GM, BX, D, & SII.

Premarket losers: ING, ESLR, ACGY, ALD, RRI, GLBL, SIG, CRBC, BHP, RTP, BBL, TPX, LAB, CGV, FRO, LYG, QGEN, BCS, MT, SI, TTM, MT, IBN, TIE, AAUK, AIG, & CBI.

After the opening bell, at 10:AM we'll take another look at the latest reading on consumer sentiment. Like we've seen this week, not much is expected from any of these economic reports and the market doesn't seem to be reacting much to poor data in hope that the bad news has already been priced in. Speaking of which, Warren Buffett is out with bullish comments on American stocks and you're likely to hear a lot of discussion over his comments today.

All in all, unless we have a very poor day in the market we should close out the week with some nice gains (i.e. both the Dow & S&P 500 are currently up over +5% on the week). This would be the first positive week since the first week of September. Go make a great day!