The Market On Friday

  Good morning. It is 59 degrees and sunny here in the Upper Hudson Valley. Sunshine is predicted along with temperatures in the high 60s. The long weekend is almost here and hooray for that. The vegetable garden is a top priority along with lots of house maintenance activity. Hell, I may even break out the grill and see what kind of vegetable concoctions I can create. Over the last few months I've been switching back to a mostly vegetarian diet. I have eaten some fish here and there and that's about it. Generally speaking I feel lighter, not really weight-wise, just some kind of overall feeling. The more I kept reading about the modern state of meat production in the USA, the more I got repulsed. I think if you want to eat meat the best way to go is with locally grown small farmer types who overall seem to do it all better. But hey opinions are easy to find and I certainly understand budgets and needs and even tastes. It's not like I didn't participate in eating meat for many many years. So, no trip laying here.

  At 8:45 a.m. ET futures are slightly higher and the price of light crude per barrel is down yet still floating above $60. The market is poised to open higher.

  The holiday weekend means that Wall Street will be closed on Monday. One suspects that many traders are already on vacation and so that usually leads to special pre-holiday trading patterns today. Inflation is on everyone's mind as a government report comes out and as Janet Yellen speaks on the topic this afternoon. With interest rates still incredibly low and with gas prices also lower, inflation is not high on people's minds at this moment, but hey medical costs, the daily cost of maintaining a household - ouch.

CNN: Stocks: 5 things to know before the open

...Fed chair Janet Yellen is due to give a speech about inflation at 1 p.m. ET.

In Japan, the central bank said it would maintain its monetary stimulus program at the same pace and predicted the moderate economic recovery would continue.