Today's retail sales report for the retail group was pleasing, rising 8% versus an estimated 0.3% and last month's 1%. With corporate cash still at record levels, it is likely that we will see continued acquisition's such as Merck's (MRK) move today to buy Endocyte's (ECYT) rights to Vintafolide, a new cancer drug in trials. The price tag was about $1 billion! Our forward-looking sector model's top three are Financials, Healthcare and Basic Materials.
The remainder of this week will include a plethora of big-name industries across the board. Tomorrow morning, includes Ameritrade (AMTD), Goldman Sachs (GS) and State Street (STT) from the Financial Sector, and Johnson & Johnsons (JNJ) from Healthcare. While under siege, the Technology sector will feature releases from Intel (INTC), IBM, Seagate (STX) (a Sabrient favorite), and Yahoo (YHOO).
Economic releases this week feature most of the housing industry data, industrial production tomorrow, initial jobless claims and the Leading Economic Indicators on Thursday.
While we await the reports of this week and the weeks to come, we continue to seek undervalued large- and mid-cap stocks and recommend hedging with European ETFS such as VGK, IEV, and/or EWP.