We've got another modestly higher open for Wall Street this morning. One positive for the stock market, early going, is the price of crude, sliding below $54 briefly at around 7 a.m. It has since bounced back to about $54.60. Analysts continue to point to mild weather as the cause, though the truly "mild" weather in the Northeast is about to run out and that may actually be putting a floor under crude. On the bullish side, but not of great help: some rumblings from OPEC in support of promised production cuts as well as a dispute between Belarus and Russia that caused the former to cut Russian oil supplies to Poland, Germany and the Ukraine.
See Kevin's market blog for some interesting perspective on EEM http://kevinsmarketblog.blogspot.com/. Rest assured, there will be plenty of other crude related victims if the bears can gain more traction and send crude below $53. One other macro sidenote: Our President will soon be detailing is latest Iraq strategy. The Wall Street Journal reports that Arab states worry the entire region could eventually be engulfed in war: Click Here. That's also another reason not to get too bearish on crude.
Otherwise, norrow trading range in the stock markets as Zen trader notes: http://zentrader13.blogspot.com/. There has clearly been evidence that key indices have been topping out, but this process doesn't necessarily happen in a few days, and certainly the bears don't have the momentum and strength with a VIX still languishing down in the high 11 range to slam the market.
Venezuela and VNT.. down 14% but at least off the lows after it dropped to as low as $9. Lesson learned: While these blow ups don't happen every day, these emerging markets are not like Canada or Japan. VNT looked safe with a 4 p/e, oh well.
Sprint-Nextel... while aggregate subs rose, it is simply amazing that it lost 300,000 POST-pay subs. Stock is down 10%. What kind of buffoons are running it? I can think of many companies which easily lost 300,000 customers (and this isn't even an apples to apples comparison of monthly customers) - namely old regional northeast retailers, the automakers, etc - but those losses took years to accomplish. 300k in one quarter is pretty darned amazing. That's 3300 customers each and every day saying to Gary Foresee, the Sprint CEO, "your company stinks" and I'm going to Verizon, Cingular, etc.
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