U.S. markets are set to build on Friday's strong gains on the back of Apple's (AAPL) big patent victory over Samsung, announced Friday after the close. U.S. futures are up sharply this morning and drifting steadily higher as the opening bell approaches. European markets are also up across the board as the positive tone of U.S. markets overshadows a big 1.74% drop in China's Shanghai Composite as it hit lows not seen since early 2009.
QE remains in the forefront of investors minds, and over the weekend the Fed's Evans commented that the Fed should continue to implement QE measures until unemployment begins to reverse course, indicating that "...we are well past the tthreshold for additional action; we should take that action now." Meanwhile, silver and gold have both moved above their 200-day moving averages, a critical technical hurdle as they try to sustain their current moves up and off of recent price lows and begin to move up the right sides of their technical chart patterns.
Stocks
AAPL is obviously the big story of the day as it moves through the 680 level after closing at 663.22. AAPL's move is likely to drag other tech stocks higher with it, and pre-open indicatiions confirm this.
General and branded drug developer WPI gapped up at Friday's open as we reported to members right after the opening bell, then moved higher all day on favorable FDA approval news for its lidocaine topical patch 5%. WPI was up 41% in earnings in its most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago.