Bond Buying Binge

Good morning. Premarket futures have a positive bias following slightly lower than expected jobless claims (last week's was revised higher) and earnings reports from Oracle, Nike, & FedEx.

In other headlines, Citigroup plans a reverse stock split while spending $10 million for new offices, AIG's CEO asks employees to repay half of their bonus cash, and Fannie Mae is due to pay retention bonuses to some executives. In response to these headlines, Congress is working on a bill to tax bonuses made by firms receiving over $5 billion in federal aid.

Premarket gainers: FNM, FRE, AIG, ABK, PMI, DRYS, CNO, PUK, AGM, ORCL, ING, LYG, C, GNK, BZH, LEA, WBS, UIS, ETFC, BAC, CS, BRCD, ORLY, FEED, HBAN, FITB, SAP, FCX, MTXX, SSRI, GOLD, AAUK, & RBS.

Premarket losers: NCS, ESLR, ZEUS, SFG, PRGN, SOHU, DENN, MLHR, ARE, DDR, NKE, AZN, MRO, CROX, TWP, PRGS, EWBC, TRN, YRCW, AGO, CYBX, & HBI.

At 10:AM we have Leading Indicators and the Philadelphia Fed Survey. Thirty minutes later the Fed's Daniel Tarullo testifies on bank supervision.

The market will no doubt continue to look for consequences to the Fed's bond-buying binge including the impact to the U.S. dollar. It will be interesting to see if predictions from a think tank in Asia receives much attention today.

Obviously, we're up against resistance in overbought conditions and traders will be watching for a breakout above yesterday's intraday highs at S&P 803 and whatever new headlines come our way throughout the session. Remember, options expiration is tomorrow.

Have a terrific Thursday!