Friday Chaos & Corporate Specific Drivers

Chaos reigns in Boston as the FBI and Boston Police close in on the two brother terrorist suspects, with one now dead and another at large. The city has been shut down with residents told to stay home after a wild chase last evening included more bombs and possibly a suicide vest being exploded. One MIT security officer is dead today and the hunt is on and includes train stops out of the Boston area. Meanwhile, in the corporate world, GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt warned about weakness in Europe and set stocks lower today. The day followed the disappointing earnings of IBM last evening and another disappointment from McDonald’s this morning. As a result, the PowerShares QQQ (Nasdaq: QQQ) is lower by 3.2%, but the SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY) is higher by 0.4%. Stocks are mixed because of the mixed earnings performance of individual corporations within the indexes.

Economic Events

Federal Reserve Governor Jeremy Stein is speaking on liquidity regulation at the Richmond Fed’s Credit Markets Symposium in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Overseas Markets

EUROPE	9:50 AM ET	ASIA/PACIFIC	CLOSE
EURO STOXX 50	+0.5%	NIKKEI 225	+0.7%
German DAX	-0.2%	Hang Seng	+2.3%
CAC 40	+0.9%	S&P/ASX 200	+0.2%
FTSE 100	+0.3%	Korean KOSPI	+0.4%
Greek ASE	+1.1%	BSE India SENSEX	+1.5%

G-20 finance ministers and central bankers will gather in Washington D.C. for the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. The IMF will issue its World Economic Outlook.

Commodity Markets (9:50 AM ET)

WTI Crude	+0.3%
Brent Crude	+0.3%
RBOB Gasoline	+0.2%
NYMEX Natural Gas	-0.1%
Gold Spot	+0.8%
Silver Spot	+0.4%
COMEX Copper	-2.5%
CBOT Corn	+0.2%
CBOT Wheat	-0.2%
CBOT Soybeans	+0.2%
ICE Sugar	+0.6%
ICE Cocoa	+1.0%
ICE Orange Juice Conc.	+1.0%
CME Live Cattle	-0.4%

Corporate Events

A troika of earnings reports monopolized the market wire last evening, with IBM (NYSE: IBM), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) each reporting results. McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) also reported this morning and is moving.

Security	Morning Move
IBM	-6.7%
GOOG	+2.7%
MSFT	+4.2%
MCD	-2.3%

General Electric (NYSE: GE) Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt’s comments about European weakness set U.S. shares lower today.

The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) dropped out of the bidding for Dell (Nasdaq: DELL).

The FAA may be about to clear Boeing’s (NYSE: BA) Dreamliner aircraft to fly again.

The corporate wire has the earnings of General Electric (NYSE: GE), McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), Honeywell (NYSE: HON), Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB), Laboratory Corp. of America (NYSE: LH), State Street (NYSE: STT), 1st United Bancorp (Nasdaq: FUBC), Acme United (NYSE: ACU), Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI), Briggs & Stratton (NYSE: BGG), First Horizon National (NYSE: FHN), First Niagara Financial (Nasdaq: FNFG), Genuine Parts (NYSE: GPC), Kansas City Southern (NYSE: KSU), Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB), Manpower (NYSE: MAN), Metrocorp Bancshares (Nasdaq: MCBI), MoSys (Nasdaq: MOSY), National Penn Bancshares (Nasdaq: NPBC), Rockwell Collins (NYSE: COL), SunTrust Banks (NYSE: STI), Taylor Capital (Nasdaq: TAYC), TCF Financial (NYSE: TCB), Tsakos Energy Navigation (NYSE: TNP) and Under Armour (NYSE: UA).

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