The Market On Friday

  Good morning. It is 50 degrees and cloudy sunny here in the Upper Hudson Valley. A sunny day in the 50s is expected. Alas the Knicks lost their Madison Square Garden opener to the Hawks last night. After the Knicks devoured the Bucks on Wednesday, the team looked very confused and tentative on Thursday. Yes, they did execute a few nice plays and there were indications of good potential, but overall the team is a work in progress.

  At 9:00 a.m. ET futures are modestly higher and the price of oil per barrel is up. The market is poised to open higher.

  Relatively speaking I am personally somewhat neutral about the market. This is life in 2015, this is our economy, this is how things work with money globally. We can be idealists and write about its massive and unlimited failings, the way it vulture-izes areas of the world in so many destructive ways. We could wish for a better more humane economic system, but this is what we have. We are sitting in the harsh reality of an economic system that has more faults than one could even count, and more faults that are unknown. There are hidden aspects that occur in investment houses, dark economies that we barely know about. Most Americans are clueless on this stuff. Having said all this, notice that First Solar showed a better than expected earnings report and the company's stock is rising.

CNN: Stocks: 5 things to know before the open

Investors in First Solar (FSLR) are in for a treat after the solar panel manufacturer released better-than-expected earnings on Thursday evening. Shares are rising by about 11% premarket.