The Market On Thursday

  Good morning. It is 23 degrees and almost lightly snowing here in Upstate NY. We have one more official month of Winter, today we are 2/3rds of the way through the cold season. Everyone seems to mutter under their breath about how we look forward to the warmer weather, so be it. One interesting part is how the body seems to adapt, we go out in 30 degree weather and feel fine, no shivering anymore.

  At 6:30 a.m. E.T. futures are flat and the price of oil per barrel is down. The market is poised to open flat to lower.

  Investors will parse a few more fourth quarter reports along with data on housing, employment, and inflation. Harsh economic news out of Europe has effected the indexes recently and exactly how this will factor into an essentially booming corporate economy is not perfectly clear. One can still find an economist of high standing who will indicate optimism or pessimism, the market is hard to predict, however at present we are clearly in the high end of the index spectrum.

CNN: Stocks struggle to recover momentum

...reports on inflation and initial jobless claims are...

...data on existing home sales...

European markets fell sharply in morning trading on concerns about tighter monetary policy in the U.S. and the disappointing PMI data.