U.S. stock futures were all over the place pre-market today. Nasdaq futures went from essentially fair value to over 10-points below fair value and back to just under 3-points below fair value all in about 45-minutes in the morning. I usually have CNBC America droning-on in the background and I did not hear a mention of this peculiar behavior absent anything we didn’t hear yesterday..…Stocks managed to open flat and began to climb shortly after the opening. After a late morning swoon, stocks powered to solid gains over about 30-minute period. From there, we just moved back and forth until another pullback in the early afternoon. The Nasdaq “kissed” the break even line around 2:56 PM EST and then was defended by some pretty large buy programs. Its amazing how many "picture watchers" are operating out there. This has been a common occurrence in recent months with both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 indexes….We heard after the close that Motorola (MOT) pre-announced revenues lower by a pretty wide margin. Motorola (MOT) expects second quarter sales to be in the range of $8.6 billion to $8.7 billion versus $9.4 billion expected. They blamed lower volume demand in Asia and Europe. That part is a bit disconcerting since those economies have been doing somersaults over the U.S. This news will surely be dismisssed as "company specific" in the morning by the various well-dressed men and women they call "analysts." And to a degree, they might be partially correct. In a nutshell, it was a day that felt like the bulls were trying their best to ignore the previous day's tumultuous subprime news and if they can just let that day float down the river a ways, and out of sight, everything will be alright.
